King Salmon
Under the bone white moon lattices
of king salmon ribs litter the banks of their birth streams. Below the murmuring surfaces of westward
running streams, smolts burst from their clear coral eggs stell wearing yolk
sacs on their bulging bellies. If the
embryonic fish survive the hungry mouths of predators on their westward trips
to Lake Michigan, they will return to their
birth place at maturity. It is their
place to be born, to spawn and to die.
The imprint of their birth place
enters into their bodies along a sense organ called the lateral line that
carries an accurate map and compass. It
is a network of circuitry more intricate than the West
Michigan river systems. The
fish will be able to return with the certainty of the cycling planets and
constellations of stars.
In the jade green waters of the inland
sea, Lake Michigan, king salmon gorge on
smaller fish and crustaceans. Their
skins speckled with dark colored spots carry the blue sheen of sky and the
earth tones of forest. They feed their
voracious dream of the birth stream until their bodies grow heavy with it.
Their bodies are stuffed with coral eggs or pearly white milt—female and
male. For both sexes the dream is the
same. It enters the tops of their heads
as the sun streams into their pineal gland and gathers force.
In the freedom of the sweetwater sea, they
bide their time, slowly fanning their tails, drifting through layers of warm
and cool water called the thermocline.
They drift. In their bodies they carry the wordless undeniable dream: a
rocky stream bottom in the shadows of pines, the traceries of ferns, and
wildflowers.
The dream gathers force as the
harvest moon grows heavy on the horizon.
Sleek and round from a summer of feeding and their cargo of coral or
pearl, they grow restless and cease their feeding. All at once they streak toward the estuary,
linger there for a while, then streak upstream toward their place. It has been so since the Pleistocene times
when the salmon breathed glacial melt water through their red gills. It is still the same water and still the same
urgent force: birth, procreation and death.
So they ignore baited hooks, snares
and leap dams following the ghosts of their migratory ancestors. Finally they reach the place where they
wriggled free of their gelatinous eggs and begin their journeys. The female fans a hollow in the stones with
her tail while the male waits and watches.
She releases the clear coral eggs then the male releases his pearly
white milt to fertilize them. The king
salmon have spent it all. They die and
their elements enter other life cycles along the stream. Only their clean bones
remain while the new generations gestate on the bottom of the stream.
