Marriage

Doug Fuller

Because we have hands, we know we live
in a world cupped by the means of its own

destruction—as when I try to hold anything
still as salmon in the river frozen,

a crazed grizzly pounds all his weight
upon the surface when he should hibernate

like the others. When I am beside you, imagine:
one world silent as ice, held asleep in snow.

Another & it’s spring, the ice hatched.
We work hard because air & sparrow

set side by side is only partial truth. For as wings
become the wind, salmon dream a current

even when time stops. Their scales reflecting claws
until bear is fish & fish, again, becomes water.