"Words' Worth" Poetry Readings
Poets at the Culture, Arts, and Parks Committee
of the Seattle City Council.
Salmon Time by Tom Casey
Synchronize your heart beat with the full moon
tide. Inhale the scent your home stream leaves
behind. Harmonize the seasons that divide your life.
Now you're living on salmon time.
There's a rhythm when your livin' on salmon time.
There's a feeling you've been through this all before.
There's a certainty that life revolves and never ends
when you see the world through salmon eyes.
So let dreams of immortality decide your course.
Trust your instincts and your lateral line.
Balance your pectorals with your dorsal fin then
leave your dread of death and ruin behind.
The Creator of the sockeye and the Bering Sea,
the Sculptor of the Cosmos, by design, hand-
crafted us to swim upstream and spawn new lives
and to raise 'em up on salmon time.
Our lives serve out their purposes like cohos' do.
Our fates are finned and scaled then streamlined.
Sure as winter follows fall, scour out your fears
then all that once seemed common turns sublime.
From the gravel we all travel to a destiny
ordained by old Devonian tides.
What we've become can be undone and made
brand new, if we'll just go back to salmon time.
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