Pages 13 & 14
Posted: March 3rd, 2011, 9:11 pm
In shadow of rocky peaks
Western ocean is cold and deep
Grey not blue
She is not yet red
Chinook is her name
People in long canoes above seek her flesh
They carve her totem in cedars reaching to the eagles' home
In the Pacific deep she grows
Up and down rocky coast
Bays and inlets at rivers' mouth
Around Haida G'waii
The moon guides the tide
Rolls back up the river
Now older and turning red Chinook follows
Against the fast rolling flow
With many she travels home
Mounting roaring falls
Climbing valley slopes
She remembers rocky mountain shadows
Familiar mists fall from their peaks
great fir and cedars remember her
Some have fallen by river graves
Chinook is red against the jewelled river bottom
Hunched against time ravaged age
The river grows colder in the glacial womb
She's grown ragged in this shallow creek
She will place her new life eggs
Here in the place of her own birth
Here she will die
Writhing with all of life's pain
She feeds the eagle with rotting flesh
Yes in the west she has lived and died
