Aware that summer baked the water clear
Today I came to see a fleet of trout
But as I wade the salmon limp away,
Their dorsal fins like gravestones in the air,
On their sides the red that kills the leaves.
Only sun can beat a stream this thin.
The river Sky is humming in my ear.
Where this river empties in the sea
Trout are waiting for September rain
To sting their thirst alive. If they speed
Upstream behind the kings and eat the eggs
The silvers lay, I'll pound the drum for rain.
But sunlight drums, the river is the same
Running like old water in my ear.
I will cultivate the trout, teach their fins
To wave in water like the legs of girls
Tormented black in pools. I will swim
A week to be witness to the spawning,
Be a trout, eat the eggs of salmon--
Anything to live until the trout and rain
Are running in the river in my ear.
-Richard Hugo, 1959
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