Steelhead Fishing before the Ban by George Moore

for Chris M.

The change was on them, silver-backed to steel blue,
and upstream a kind of madness
as they hit water too shallow for their seaward bulks
and before they die, strike one last time.

Classes stalled in spring, and the Deschutes
looked better all the time, and after a night
drinking to the wilds, weather, and coastal streams,
we’d drive a hundred miles inland to its mouth.

We drank bitter coffee from a steel Stanley thermos
and talked of hooking into a monster.
But the day would warm into that desert air,
and if fishless at noon, we’d still say it was well-spent.

A strike was all you cared about, a sudden snag
of silver-red muscle in the water. From beneath a rock,
against the current, the steelhead would hit
and sometimes hook the spinner.

But it did not matter much, although
it did, if you snagged in a tangle and lost the lure
or spent the dawn alone in cold water
waiting for the fish and their madness to stir.

When one would fly into the air and snap a line,
or bump and dive into a blackhole pool,
you’d see in their madness yours, a surge to taste
the world beyond the hunger that sustained them.