"For the Trout," by Greg Keeler

I       Cutthroat You were here first. I can see why in the way the rivers don't rob you of what the streams gave. The dim rosettes on your sides live behind your spots in another time as if Lewis and Clark were still planning to meet near water and would never stop. And the thin orange slashes on your throat will always be proof. No matter how the world may crowd toward the hybrid of loss they will be there. Your gill covers burn crimson toward purple as you flaunt the purity of the West spilling east from the divide and a world lost in you.

II           Brook You live hard, in the backwater and eddies where your flesh turns like coal into diamond and you burn orange up the flare of your fins for your own reason The tracks stunning your back into dark marble are where we would go in sleep if dream were water. Since it's not we rely on you to show us the way east. When you find size in still waters, four pounds draped over a purist's hand, it leaves no choice: Plato was wrong. All of the West was wrong. This living shadow burns, has weight.

III            Brown You have come a long way -- and stayed. Still you seem willing to put up with us When we take your water away, slow it down, turn it warm, your jaw gets more determined with each fall spawning -- and you grow. We call you brown and your red spots defy us, floating on brown glowing gold turning purple or turquoise when you flop on the grass. Your teeth turn inward sharp down your throat so nothing you catch can escape you.

IV          Rainbow Running against the line you are the promise. Where the brown dives, you leap. And there in the sun, above the circle of your entrance into this world, you let us know for one instant what you know. And there is nothing in the color of sun through water that could spell promise so clearly. On shore your colors go quickest of all. Unless we lose you now we will lose you always.