Amendment

a restoration poem

Amendment
For the Elwha River Dam Removal  

What does it mean to free a river?
How is the event recorded
in a ledger an ocean might keep?
Or an ocean current 
or a homebound sockeye
or a cedar seedling?
Though is it an event
or a steadily pouring 
atonement?

You can sit there in the fine warm sand
of the freshly laid delta
and feel it surging by:
the heavily flowing gratitude.

You can watch it finally slide
into the sea, and sense the swirling relief 
as flow dives under wave
wave curls over flow
fresh water into salt 
salt into fresh 
the celebratory mixing
and passing of stories.

You can breathe the air flowing over
this meeting of waters
and feel it rush coolly past you 
into the darkening world
like a kind of light.