Fall Run
by Ann Spiers

The salt water is so warm I stand in its depths,
my feet carefully shuffling over the cobbles
coated with barnacles. I cast and cast again,
the line wavering under the red moon,
the far shore softened by the smoke drifting west,
lofting over the Cascades.

                    Pinks running slow this evening.

                   Tomorrow clears of smoke.
There is a reversal. Off the Pacific, cirrus hook their way
east across our lowland sky. Moisture in the air, the sun
has a halo as light filters through high ice crystals.
The Cascades block the sea's wet from going east
onto the dry plateau where smoke floods the valleys
as wild fires eat pines, sage, and immigrant grasses.

 

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