As their life circles around, they start as eggs which become freshwater fish in rivers, then transform themselves into travelers journeying downriver to the vast ocean, and next into adult saltwater fish. Last week when I wrote about transformation, I think I forgot to point out that Salmon themselves are great Transformers. Posted in Posts | Tagged Poems | 4 Replies The Return of the Salmon But apparently Cris & I have not yet reached that edge: I have long loved this poem, which fortuitously appeared in my inbox this morning. Posted with kind permission from the poet Right at the water’s edge, not because you had given upīut because now, you would find a different way to tread,Īnd because, through it all, part of you could still walk on, To promise what you needed to promise all along,Īnd to abandon the shoes that had brought you here To empty your bags to sort this and to leave that Them as they drifted through the western light To take out each frayed letter you broughtĪnd light their illumined corners, and to read No way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let you passĮxcept to call an end to the way you had come, Walking before you across water, going where shadows go,

To your future now but the way your shadow could take, Into the western sea, and the moon rising behind youĪs you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,

Trickster spirit