Salmon as a Working Man

(Gorda Plate Press: Mendocino, Calif.: 1997), p. 102

Salmon puts in his hours just as reliable

as anybody on the line, from the lowest punk

to the man in the neat suit who deplanes.

Salmon cuts right across class lines,

the fish just works, hen and buck, foresworn,

even though all the cousins have died young.

Salmon is outside plugging away, even in wet weather,

even if the sun rises cold and dry over awestruck hills,

Salmon shows up when the whistle commands it,

and he don't lay around watching tv on his day off.

But he moves with resolve through green sea,

sometimes bending a line with his mouth, coughing the ghost

onto a bloody plank with boot or hammer,

coughing what he had of his origins,

and everything gleaned in the years at sea,

doing so with grace.

Salmon packs a lunch in his silver belly,

sets out up his natural river among his kind

doing the hard labor against a rising flood,

into the river which drops hard.

Salmon keeps pushing though he gets old.

There is always work to do.

Even dying is a job to do well.

For salmon, it is all there is;

To leave a fine corpse and a nest of eggs.