A Field Guide To SALMON

Remembering the smell of the stream
the salmon returns, sometimes
a thousand miles
to spawn and die in the same place
it once was a fingerling.

The spring thaw and growing light
carries the fingerling
downstream, adjusting to
saltwater, the ocean.

At the mouth of the river
let us set out to live,
attach ourselves to something we love,
fight our way back,
find magnitude in the undoing.