At the end of the summer
after we'd cabled in the root wads
some of them fifteen feet across
restoring habitat lost after the flood
of nineteen sixty-four
when the creek filled with debris
thanks to the logging
and the bulldozers came through
leaving no shelter for the salmon
the steelhead, cuthroat trout
the reward for our work was coming back
in time to see two steelhead trout
eight or ten pounders
using their powerful tails
to make a redd
to hold the precious eggs
safe in the gravel bed
our root wads now protected