Prodigal Fish

Inside the rock redd their mothers dug with fraying fins, the eggs grow eyes then carry yolk sacs like oxygen tanks.  As fry they graduate to lake, then, the one to ten in a mother’s 1500 whisk out to sea.  In the salt water, they vacuum up copepods, krill, radiolarian, fattened on the energy of chlorophyl processed sunshine. In a year or so, millions suddenly turn away from food and swim against the current, through the nets and back up the river.  They give their young up from their bodies and then give their bodies up to their young, to the bears, to the birds, even to the trees which grow noticeably taller along the banks. 

In a nest of rock
1500 orbs of hope
That one will come back.

Thanks to Ranger Jherek who describes salmon as “pure sunshine.”