Poem: "Seasons of Sea and Stream"
This poem came out of the November 2013 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from Dreamwidth user Sylvaine. It has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette.
Seasons of Sea and Stream
From September through December,
Chinook salmon swim upstream
following the scent of the headwaters
in which they were born
and to which they must return.
The females lay their pink eggs
in gravel spawning redds
where the males spread their milt,
mothers guarding the spawn
until they die a few weeks later.
From December through May,
the salmon eggs hatch into tiny alevin
nourished by the golden yolk sac,
and they hide in the gravel
until the sac is absorbed.
They emerge as free-swimming fry
that venture out into the stream
in search of food to eat,
splinters of silver fish in quick water.
As parr they learn to school,
feeding on invertebrates
and learning to navigate
the twisting invisible currents.
They stay in fresh water
for twelve to eighteen months.
Then they travel downstream
to the brackish estuaries,
where they transform into smolts.
This allows them to live in salt water,
and over the course of a few months,
they migrate down to the ocean.
Sweet becomes sharp,
small becomes large,
and off they go.
In the Pacific Ocean,
the Chinook salmon range
far and wide with the waves
over the course of several years,
gaining weight rapidly.
They are big torpedo fish feeding
on seaweed, jellyfish, and crustaceans.
Then as the weather cools
and autumn spreads over the ocean,
the salmon turn toward the taste of home.
They swim upstream, strong and silver
through the white rush of water,
leaping high over the waterfalls,
the flash of their white sides
a fulfillment of their liquid destiny:
what goes down to the ocean
must come up to the stream.
* * *
Notes:
I researched salmon in general and Chinooks in particular for this poem. You can also read a detailed guide to the salmon life cycle.