Death of the Elwha

She held the holy ones, the long-haired lords

of the stream—twelve years old—

when they returned

as chieftains, 100-pounders: The Elwha Giants.

Pinks and dogs, too, so thick horses

would rear and refuse

to cross. All the species, coho

and sockeye, knew home

as her sweet water flowing from Mt. Olympus,

God’s own mathematics working itself out

between her banks, rock to rock.

In 1912, a dam was built without fish ladders.

Who would do it—stop the original flow?

I will name them, the accused:

The Olympic Power and Development Company.

Thomas Aldwell, president.

A local board of directors, including

Joshua Green, prominent Seattle banker.

Oh irony! Leslie Darwin,

the state’s fish commissioner

under state governor Ernest Lister.

Darwin said, “It is out of the question for us

to allow another run to beat its brains out against that dam,”

and then settled for a hatchery, instead.

The Crown Zellerbach Corporation, who built a second dam

without fish ladders to power their lumber mills.

They owned the town of Port Angeles, too.

Get this: the reservoir behind the wall of death

Is named after Aldwell, Lake Aldwell.

Dams built in defiance of the law.

So the legislature changed the law to allow hatcheries,

“rag factories,” and accepted more dams

without fishways—

killers of the wild runs

on the Cowlitz, Chehalis and White Salmon rivers.

Mother of all, our Columbia, choked to death by dams and silt.

It is done. I have named them—a story

instead of a song. A long rope

of words and ghosts

to hang them.