On this April morning,
Golden Balsam Root and tiny white
Spring Beauties dot hard rock
glacier soil where Lost River runs
from its source high in the Cascades
to this beach where you would
have loved to fish. Winter storms felled
a Cottonwood lanced across the trail,
tip in the swirling current,
a bridge of sorts, from one landscape
to another.  So like the days
since your death in this month when
you were born. The river channels
bleached rock islands like  Faith Creek
where we fished as kids for Greyling.
You always caught the most, strung
them on willow sticks while I threw
mine back. But not the Copper River Jack
it took three of us to wrestle down. 
My black Lab plows the boiling current
Intent on fetching her ball. She knows
nothing of grief, only the joy of this April
morning warming the beach, the long
cold run over hard pan and stone.

Julianne Seeman dedicated this poem to her
brother, Vaughn.