THINKING ABOUT MY DEATH
AT THE NIMBUS HATCHERY
Raceway ponds teem with salmon fingerlings.
Emerald scales
flash when they rise, break my shadow
on the luminous surface.
Day and night the young fish
nose the artificial current.
Do they sense winter coming?
Great canal gates will open,
flood the ladder, link the river
to cement holding ponds where fish,
returned home from the sea, rest
and ripen. There, the crowder’s metal grip
lifts them to the stainless kill room
where skilled hands work fluid knives,
slice ripe bellies of red females, spill new life—
in orange roe—over shining steel;
egg by glistening egg.
"Thinking About My Death at the Nimbus Hatchery" was first published in Susurrus: The Sacramento City College Literary Journal, and appears in These Rivers, a chapbook of poems from Rattlesnake Press.
lifts them to the stainless kill room
where skilled hands work fluid knives,
slice ripe bellies of red females, spill new life—
in orange roe—over shining steel;
egg by glistening egg.
"Thinking About My Death at the Nimbus Hatchery" was first published in Susurrus: The Sacramento City College Literary Journal, and appears in These Rivers, a chapbook of poems from Rattlesnake Press.
