Salmon

To live with so pure and single a purpose,

Turn from the broad-backed sea,
leave youth and the long free years
behind to answer the ancient call
buried within every cell of your body.

Pilgrim, whose end was set long before
eyes opened to the smooth black gravel
bed of your birth, and the unassailable
longing for the borderless deep took hold,

Drove you against all odds, one
of countless millions in life’s improbable
extravagance, down the cold fast mountain
streams, the long slack deadly waters
and the concrete dams where the falls once stood,
to the estuaries, the Sound, the salty

Green waves, and now back, the years
no time at all, your life but one turn
of the wheel, flanks heaving out
their final breaths, flesh only yesterday powerful
enough to command the great mountain rivers
now wasting, eggs set in the very
beds where you were spawned, new life
already quickening as your flame dies.

One eye fixed, through water, to the sun.