midnight, floodlights
purse seiners packed in tight
anchored on the fragile shoal
shadows play on the white wall
dune grass, needle, leaf of tree
gallows rising from the sea
back and forth the tenders run
salmon gathered one by one
                                      
                                 the struggle and the toil
                                                                      
                                                         the silver flashing fins
                                                                                          
                                                                            leaping from the net

                                                                                            slipping back within

After our 3rd 16-hour shift we skipped down the gravel road in the 4 am dusk holding still numb hands
hysterically laughing about a snowman made of ****** fish ice and decorated with intestines
to our room of splintered walls and sand infused beds.

Drunk on sleep deprivation and the movement of the conveyor belts
Fiona demanded of the 4 am twilight that our work be easier tomorrow
I told her that tomorrow could always be the hardest
she told me that I’m Eeyore because my contemplation always looks a bit like pessimism.

A week later I stuck my finger in the pus filled lesion of a salmon
and worried that I wasn’t existing well enough
I asked Fiona if she thought we were more ourselves dressed in layers of sleep deprivation
She cut 3 tails and stated that we must experience more life when we’re awake for 18 hours a day.

This place had forced the clean carefully constructed versions of ourselves to collapse
but she didn’t want this coarse damp translation of humanity to be what we intrinsically are.

Water and pink slime slid down my rain gear as I processed her words and the fillets sliding by
60 salmon later she spoke again
“You said once that every person you meet has some sort of impact on your life.
Maybe you’re always you but never the you that you were before this moment
because who we are is infinitely changing
we won’t always be grime.”

In my little-boy town up north
rivers were not yet plugged.
Poled men came down and watched
for silvered flashes.

Pink would be inside and make
a mouth want to melt it down.
The river power we would sing
Guthrie-style in grade school,

how rolling power and darkness
were misaligned, how wild
river and light was such empty logic,
and little boys learn to forget.

In school, where poor men send
the next young nation, a new
nation conceived in hydrodamnation
and simple salmon ******.

Little boy rain from Rockies
going near my door, and whipped
whirlpools spinning funnels of
quick deadening swim traps,

so stay so far from bad river,
doing nothing more than
running off to sea. Stay near shore
and enjoy the new electricity.

So much depends
on a yellow
Bulldozer

Caked with mud
Beside thoughts
of payday

So the salmon soars
And the bear bitterly
feasts on their flesh.

His voice is a roar,
Yet his heart does flee
At their very sight.

A shame it may be
That a beast so kind
Causes them to die.

He wants to be free
from fate in his mind,
He can't explain why.

Is it truly sin
if one feels regret,
and would rather die?