I have always wanted

to share with you the gleam on a harbor seal’s eye
as she and I watch silently the sunrise,
afloat together, me in my kayak, she at rest
on her belly, motionless on the Salish Sea,

and that we hear a heron croak and fly off
to the east, where the sun brightens clouds
and eagle drops from the tip-top point
of a Douglas fir, to glide

above a salmon creek where it enters this
salt cove and chum rise to enter that fresh flow
as I have always wanted to enter too, urgent,
surging, leaping toward home.