—New York Times headline, September 4, 2016
 
New guys at Pike Street Fish Market learn to catch fish
tossed one to another. Learn by doing. Hands apart as for a baby,
a football. What market men call free-form fun for Seattle’s tourists
 
needs to be gentle, no damage done to money fish. King salmon,
prince of this market which holds world peace as its motto. 
Then halibut, flat flung Frisbee fish that shoppers cheer.
 
Last summer I caught my first fish – a 75-pound halibut.
A brown Alaskan monster that sucked up my pink salmon bait 
on a three-barbed hook and grappled every ounce of old lady in me. 
 
The skippers promised I could sit and fish and drink hot chocolate.
Until the fight began. I cranked and cranked up halibut.
By any measure, the crew said, way too big to keep,
 
at least twenty-four inches over the regulation limit,
oldie of ancient waters. Certainly a female full of eggs,
mud-brown ugly with silver sheen of underside.
 
My helper struggled to pull out the hook, let go
and me rooting for this fish that migrates clockwise.  
I am old. Females with decades and eggs
 
inside. First words to my mind are not sustainable yield, 
bycatch or the Baranov catch equation. More free release.
Flee into this dark sea. Let old ones fly.

came with the house, this land,
secured to a rotten fencepost and
rolled up toward a mossy boulder,
 
a remembrance of old pasture
sprouted back into woods. Where
maybe horses grazed but more likely
 
cows or sheep. My reverence
for what remains of time left
this rusted obstacle ensnared
 
until this day with wire clippers,
I cut, collect bits and invite
shadows in without disrespect,
 
without danger, wandering feet –
fox, bobcat, deer, bear, and me. 
As next comes on, what’s free.