Steelhead

I was born to river water,
to turbulence
to the underside of your world.
What you call the sun
comes to me in a torrent
of glinting silt and dimpled
waves. Struck blunt and hard 
by the current, eyes unclosing
and wary to the threats 
above, these stabbing beaks, 
and now your shadow moon 
passing over the face 
of my borrowed light. Beyond
eyes I am muscle and heart, 
a heart that pumps for muscle, 
muscle that consumes
the heart. No wonder I  
rise to you foreign, a dream,
when you lift me from 
my drowning trench
to a gaze that some call tender,
that some call love. 

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash