Poem / Salmon

I leap these giant salmon falls
like a vertically charging bull

wild eyes wide and blinkless in my
brute determination to get home

though it cost me my life
to bring life to life and the afterlife

and the whole world is doing the same
in my eyes

Look at it urging upward against the
downrush leap after leap its mouth agape

pulsating crouch springing forward
against the eternal wall endlessly ascending

Where’s the music to accompany this striving?
Is it the sound of these tons of water against me?

Is that the sweet symphony to my soul?

When I fall back with all my strength
I haven’t lost ground as much as

tested the resiliency of my intention
against all odds

Hear the held crescendo’s solemn chord
in the distance?

The exhausted but victorious serene
and greater knowledge come

in the spent muscle of arrival
the last glad spasm

of success

_____________________________
5/14/08
(from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak, in progress)