Healing Time

Three days after grading a mountain of papers, I was back in Oregon.  The World Lit. and Creative Nonfiction ones were amazing, amazing, amazing, but still exhausting since I'm 102 years old.  Buck Steelhead in old growth says,"Let the healing begin."

In Old Growth Forest

I don't want to see van Gogh, Renoir, Monet,
read Rilke or Kafka, hear Mozart, or anything,
no matter how artful, from a human mind.

Instead, I focus my yarn fly along giant logs,
undercut cliffs, ready for the instant I feel
winter's electric strike.

In hanging moss, creek music, sunlight
through ancient fir and spruce,
beside elk, raccoon, heron tracks in mud

men harvest blazing silver and pink steelhead
fresh from God's ocean.
At night I smile the smile well-rested and joyful

like I slept in a land of Paradise dreams
a thousand years.

Ain't Nothin' Like Summer in Late November

Iner, I think I found some fish (whisper).

A few springs ago, I helped an old guy who ran out of weights so he gave me his best November spot in eastern Oregon.  I caught 4 steelhead and lost one.  On the way home, I found more coho under a rainbow sky.