Migrants on the River of No Return

This year we received a special gift from a guest on one of our trips, Nevada Poet Laureate, Shaun Griffin.

We are excited to share this treasure of a poem with you.

————————————————————————————————

Migrants on the River of No Return

Big-shouldered Tim leaned back—you may want to put 

the camera down:  a five-pound steelhead shook and hurt 

and beat the line to family:  drift boat, river, and guide— 

fingerlings in the Rogue, caught in the triangle like pinecones

until we beached at Illahe Lodge to a meal of thanks

and our questions washed to the sea floor, having swung, 

nymphed, and twitched the eddies and crags of 

this metamorphosed canyon, each of us bluer than ice

in the morning cold when the sunlight crested the sugar pines 

to the mayfly, the floating green line, the wrinkled waist of

river winding down, winding down, and what the guide 

would not say—you may never catch a thing but the boat

will cuss you with fresh, aluminum corners and sometime

when the smell of bacon rises from the kitchen at dawn,

you think the world has tipped to Ernie and Coleen, father

and daughter proprietors of the Illahe, and we pulled the drapes

to stars in the deep night, one lost solar system like this,

turning and turning into the boil of water and sky and time

without the lungs of worry and wait and wishing it were 

otherwise.  This is the Rogue without us—we were only

here to watch the bear eat the buck in the grass, the otters 

roll in the sand, and turtles pop from rocks.  Like filaments 

of desire—we were quick, cool, unearthed from this place 

for the squint of a second when the steelhead swam from our hands. 

—Shaun Griffin