Crag Hill


Four Poems
resolutions of that fight

eliminated traps, fish wheels
              sportsmen
                        have made the greatest gains

fish has become a form
                                  a reattachment to nature

                                            symbols of the good life itself

places moot by elimination

                             valued and ancient possessions
             where human work had defined a way of life

                                       now the distorted and divisive fish
                                                      of Celilo Falls



when the returning runs passed

                             there was public controversy
the cost

                          new dams
                                                    additional dam

additional dams
                                  three dams

                 before the dams

                                                              nine dams



suspended lights

result that was mad. Like many kind
                         sane from the inside.

              Emerson’s railway back to nature
              was a journey that most Americans
                                        took new

                     a dream of liberation

the hope of transformation through

                                         collective self-deceptions
                       dreams as transferred
                                                                fusion

original passion is

                                             the brightness of the day



the ironies and connections

                      Science is at once the supposed authority
                sought for justifying

                                                              Nothing so crass
           that funders prefer their own interests
                                      that will probably decide the fate

                     the actual river to a virtual river

electronic fish swim past
                                                    the electronic river

                      One is FLUSH

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