In this poem, which is called "The Holding Pond,"
a holding pond is a place where they
dig a hole in the bank next to a dam.
The dam represents the farthest point
that salmon can come on their journey upstream to spawn.
And they make it possible for the salmon
to get into the pond, and they keep them
there in the interest of conservation,
as I told one of my students today,
until all the salmon have arrived.
And then they drain the pond and take the salmon
and spawn them artificially.
"The Holding Pond."
"Green riverboats launch here below the dam,
float downstream easy as insects on the sliding film,
long rods and lines held out like water striders' feet.
Beneath them, fish wait to find the way up a ladder of water
to this place, the end of a long sea trip
and the burning white air of rapids.
A schooled mass of salmon held circling for summer weeks,
by dry land before, the dam behind.
Look at them-- tired, patient, swimming.
A female passes, fungus-blind on one side where
she was touched by rocks and the choking air, and a male,
jaws bent beyond use, a red lure dangling from his flank scarred
by seals' teeth.
Men will milk his sperm in buckets with her eggs.
The cat food truck will come and leave.
In spring, the pond will swarm with tiny fish beginning
the same journey.
Can we believe in so many deaths?
There must be room somewhere in space between points of light,
like fingerlings, for schools of fish and birds,
for our own bodies to move among them,
shapes seen swimming in clear water."