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Edwin Brock

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The McCloughans’ Salmon

(and the party that followed)

From outside, the seven o’clock light rippled
as though we looked up from a clean pebble bed;
and small breathy bubbles drifted between us,
first two, then four, then all six together
like some school gathering in a flurry.

For a time we held our corners with small movements
of our tails and fins, watching feeding habits
and breeding games; then, scooping up fork-
fuls of crisp fry, darted from our reeds
into the mainstream of talk and water music.

That fish came among us like some silver offering
to a god we could not name but kept his memory alive
with plates of pink flesh and wine that was like
morning light filtered through deep water.
O we stirred mud and churned that corner of our stream

wild, always pushing up with our noses spearing
the current and white water breaking between rocks.
And found our fall and jumped it and landed
face-down in a pool at dawn with our roe gone
and our bodies like some sack that has been emptied.

 

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