As the Salmon Run Grows Thin

Our daughter has put herself
in hospital again.
­
I spend the day beside her,
talking, laughing, abiding silence
­
like two anglers on the lake,
late September silver salmon run.
­
Lying in her pink, kitty-hooded onesie,
sedatives, slumber-slurred
­
responses to the doctors,
she seems once more the three-year-old

we welcomed as a foster child,
who hankered for the salty pop
­
of salmon roe. In her early teens,
trauma-haunted hunger
­
for anything to numb the pain
overtook her spirit,
­
fierce as instinct flinging
spawning sockeyes into rocky streams,

tearing scales from their flanks.
She awakens, folds her tattooed arms

across her belly, smiles and says
I love you, Daddy.
­
My soul has caught a shoal of cohos.

My nets are full to bursting.