Tidal Marsh

Who am I
to grieve 
no heron came 
to meet 
me in the estuary. 
I am not
of this place. 
Neither silt
nor smolt. 
Neither bulrush 
nor eelgrass. 
Not crab, not chum. 
Not Stillaguamish. 
I sought 
a balancer, 
a bearded 
blue sign 
with a golden 
beak and 
submerged
talons 
you just have 
to believe in.
Fisher, 
hunter, sight 
among men. 
I squelched 
through bronze 
slime, copper 
slime, iron
slime and I 
came to an 
amphibious 
tree more 
amputated 
than limbed 
to which 
a stranger nailed 
rail ties so 
another could 
go from high 
tide to weird
light like that. 
Who am I 
to disclose 
the more 
hermetic 
details of 
local secrets
when I can’t 
even snap. Who 
am I to ask 
these wetlands
for a solid. 
My ancestors 
broke Arctic 
ice to fish. 
It was no 
Paradise 
such as this
where salmon
once leapt 
through the 
saltgrass 
right into nets 
strung between 
poles planted 
firmly in the grabby 
hug of a mud 
so good, 
a love 
so dogged 
it bears with 
the trenching,
the dredging,
all that European 
redirection of water 
and still 
does what it does 
to keep the world 
from flying apart.