The Name for This Season

Chinook are on the redds this month, their flanks
crimson as elderberry leaves.

Egg-spent corpses float to the shore; storms
strip gold and scarlet foliage from trees
to rot in brown piles. We wait

for spring, for seeds to burst from the wet ground,
for smolt to burgeon in melt-filled streams.

There’s been no frost.

But today in a mild sun, forecasted to warm to sixty—
Indian summer is not the name for this place, this season,
Chinook summer.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside