Yesterday’s salmon
Just beneath the river’s
shimmering skin, sleek, scarred
in shallow waters they lunge upstream,
up ladders, between rocks.
A twist, a splash, an arc to drop
dead still before another surge.
An ode to salmon’s final journey.
A pause, a gathering strength
against gravity’s downward
racing, tumbling current
against time in erratic spurts.
Having circled an ocean now a
return tracing back familiar scents,
the stars, following inner compass.
Their eyes a glistening delicacy.
Seagulls, ravens and crows wait.
Otter, wolf and bear pace by
the river’s edge, slink, swipe
then scamper a feast in tow.
The breeze in waves suspends
rotting relics, like discarded socks,
ghostly white, swollen, nauseating,
half-buried in the turquoise riverbed.
Their homecoming to birth waters
changing colours to mate, to spawn
before exhaustion offers them up:
phosphorus, carbon, sulfur, nitrogen
nutrients feeding forest and fern.
Black wings glide, swoosh down
witnessing an unlikely chance,
bear claws at the river’s bend
rocky outcrops, hidden tributaries.
The water’s murky blanket sways
in hollows that once could see, now
turned up receive the sky and stars.
Teeth barred on their side they lay.
This blessed passage in between
silt blinding, gills obstructed
beyond the unrelenting impulse
to swim on. One last breath’s appeal
just long enough to thrash, wiggle,
bury down—lay eggs this once.
©cristina viviani 2022
It’s a lovely poem- so much life in it!
Thank you.