Salmon

The tired fisherman reported salmon
numbers doubled – far beyond predictions.
His nets had caught a thousand, just today.

The voice was weary, as he hesitated
to reveal the harvest for the radio
reporter – weary and as much elated.

His life at sea was theirs: unquiet motion,
anguished toil, uncertainty at play
that made at times a greater emptiness.

Changing colors as from salt to fresh they go,
silver scale that shifts to deepest red,
and at the end of action – little deaths.

Nearer to the final goal – surprise,
rising in the killing air and flopping
back, a drawing – dark and absolute,

obedient to go beyond the laws
by that great fish god that rebels at limits,
to give a vision of what lies beyond.

At some familiar spot of riverbed
with gravel pushed aside, the ready eggs
slip so easily outside the body,

so the waiting male can cloud with milt
the still, surrounding space, that starts again
the cycle in the lake and moving river.

In this last posture, male and female wait,
as flesh flakes from their bones once flexible
to countless muscles. Now that strength is spent.

Did they enjoy, at least a moment, something
kin to rapture, having just performed
what was needed, as their world was hushed?

Could they feel somehow, if creatures feel,
that something of themselves was drawn again
to face the open sea, our origin,

and where in time we long to rest at last?