The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Heaven Underfoot by Diana Woodcock

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FIVE SPECIES OF SALMON

each summer returning from the sea,
completing their life cycle.
Bears competing with human anglers
for the coveted catch—many evading
both animal and human to reach
their gravel spawning beds.
Cycle completed, they die:

King salmon the first to arrive
spring to mid-summer; sockeye,
pink and chum the next to come;
then the silver, late summer into fall.

Kings (Chinook) the largest.
See them in the sea with steel-blue
backs and heads, silver sides. Entering
fresh water, blushing purplish-red.

Sockeyes (Reds), best for smoking,
at sea sleek as polished silver. Spawning,
their bodies turn scarlet, heads olive.

Pinks (Humpbacks or Humpys), the smallest,
best for canning. Spawning males mellow
to brown; females to olive green.

Chums (Dog) best for caviar and natives’
dog teams. Spawning males sport green
and purple vertical bars, dog-like teeth.

Silver (Cohos) best for poaching,
grilling—last to spawn, most acrobatic.
I would be ecstatic along the streams
of this rainforest if I had only one
silver or chum for a companion.

What joy to watch one leap, to see
its transformation like a maple leaf in fall.
How sad if my one compatriot could not
complete its upstream swim. Yet even then,
what bliss for the bear grown thin
on berries and roots of skunk cabbage.



Am I selfish, desiring the one
salmon for my own delight?
What reverie on the borderline
between sea and mountain streams,
crystals and pearls filling my dreams—
diversity of exquisite acrobatic fish—
such resolve and bravery against
all odds, swimming counter-current.

Salmons’ journey a measure
of time’s passage. Defying gravity,
enflamed by a fierce longing
to return, they ignite my own fuse.
Consumed, I too yearn (burn)
to get back to my origins.

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