5200 - Penelope La Montagne

[Lawrence Robinson]

5200*
 
Slapping their way through nature’s bath water,
sea lion and great white in their rear view,
salt water still purging as they advance,
in a mystical mitochondrial alignment,
they come. Frothing in the shallows
facing off with water’s potent wisdom,
vaulting themselves into jagged, uncertain
winter creeks, in upcountry backyards
to set a constellation of eyeballs
into the gravel bed, that finally
dams them in too, and becomes
an altar of reddened flesh,
while the garnet bark of western dogwood
stands witness to the ritual.
 
They come, undone, and in their slipstream,
the eagle, long since missing from these parts.
The sight of him snags our breath,
those wide wings, the bullet body,
the single focus – the waiting banquet.
The seduction of his winning pose
distracts us from the mass grave,
drenched in new world crimson.
The last golden leaves of willow create
a shroud of calico light, flickering.
They come, undaunted, into our midst,
showing us what is savory and wild
in us, around us, about us – chinook,
swimming up from the beginning of time.

	- Penelope La Montagne
 
 
*The headlines of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 14, 2002, touting the return of 5200 chinook salmon that passed under the Wohler Bridge in the Russian River, on the way to their breeding grounds upstream. Chinook were thought not to be native to this area because of their prolonged absence, until DNA testing showed that this is indeed home territory for them.  
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