She Went Back to the Beginning

Tain Leonard-Peck

 

River song echoing

down icy banks

seawater shivers

a chorus of return, ancestral

the call to creche.

 

Churning, relentless

urge to spawn

streams turn silver

in a deluge of desperate scales.

 

Ascend a waterfall

dodge Kodiak claws

fisher’s lures

lay in wait

thread the gauntlet before

the castle is reached

promised beds

of stones and silt.

 

A new beginning

and an imminent end

aquatic Ouroboros.