Somewhere under the shadows
of Michigan’s last white pines, the silk green
of sassafras leaves is fading,
gently, into its sun-stolen color
of muted gold.
You are wading in the shallow
wash of waves at the edge of Green Lake.
Your toes stir up silt,
plant matter, the broken down
exoskeletons
of this summer’s mayflies.
Ephemeroptera. Short-lived
wings. These frail bodies,
chock-full of eggs,
tumble from the sky and collect in giant piles
on lake shores, parking lots,
gas stations’ concrete floors—misled
by the electric light—
spilling their insides out.
You pick one up by the wing
between your forefinger and thumb and
it breaks so easily.
And this is how it is:
all those salmon, their scales already
falling from them,
fling themselves against rock beds
to clear a space for the blind hope
of re-creation.
Their love is violent. It is
the only way they know how.
And their colors dissolve.
Their bellies turn skyward.
And this is the way the salmon drift
all the way back
down stream.