Redds shine like new nickels on the dark river bottom,
salmon have returned to spawn the Deschutes,
navigating by primal memories written in DNA,
an internal Tom-Tom GPS wired in their brains.

Watching them struggle up the ladder,
consumed with a drive to leave offspring,
they are herculean athletes battling
the current and the inexorable pull of gravity.

Were these the fry I helped to seed four years ago?
A Squaxin woman told me once,
ghosts of her Coastal Salish ancestors
ride the salmon out to sea and home again.

Roe in these redds dream also of the sea,
their salty eyes and nostrils perceiving
spirits in secret claret-red kelp beds.
The waters ask only to be haunted again.