30 April 

Day 30

prompt - something that happens once a year

Salmon run

Not April, but May, perhaps,

or full June we find

they come back, strangers

to the vein of river

that rushes through the body town.

We stand , weir-walkers,

shallow ankled,

laughing, but dead serious

as the monsters swim slipstreaming,

current- led towards us.

All year waiting for it,

bunking school and smoking

Year on year of this,

14, 15, older 

when we're old men and women,

when our life flashes before us,

finds us standing over kingfisher

and faint jade in sunshine.

See, Joe has made a spear,

and I've a sort of net,

of narrow gauge, 

but you can't tell with silver

squirming by our bare feet,

muscular as children used

to scrapping

The effort is to get upriver,

and we hope that we can catch it

our hands together, ready,

gone cold white in the water,

moving as we trap her,

first salann of the new year

In the uncertain spring,

don't breathe now,

don't you breathe now 

We're never elsewhere,

never out of water,

kissed the gills on your white neck

or the place where they'd grow smooth,

the scales and skin unblemished,

you perfect in your jean shorts

And he's no kind of hero,

there's no wisdom to be had

in blood or in the pricking of a finger

After this year, 

the shoal heavy with eggs,

I don't think that we'll meet again

or won't remember,

like the stones on the bed,

with blank faces, with all faces

The 3 of us

will wake up nights in sunlight

slowly remembering we were sort of hunters

Look down, look down,  

like God or a lost gang

into the pools where 

we will

curl and jump and fail, 

these hopeful, hopeless generations