One of Janet Wendy's poems

Let me paste another poem into this blog:

Salmon Arm

Who would think to see the river
Calm, serene, shining silver
That so much life goes on below.

Seething, swirling salmon strive
Against the current to survive
With sharp-toothed lamprey on the go.


Can we make the next fierce rapid?
“I think I’m feeling rather vapid,”
Says the gravid female Coho

“Let’s just stay in this calm eddy
And masturbate until we’re ready
To face the fiercely swirling flow.”

After some delightful resting
Turning scarlet for the nesting
They line up with the striving row.

Tails lashing, scales flashing,
Mighty muscles make the dashing
Arc, into the foaming billow.

Some fall back and some succeed
Bruised and battling, impetuous the need
To travel upward, success or no

Now they’re home where they were born,
It’s time to find a mate and spawn,
Fulfill their life and then to go.


Janet Wendy Last
On the Rocky Mountaineer Train
Approaching Banff, June 9, 2006

There are several things to say about this poem. I sat beside Wendy as she composed it. That was the first and the only time I observed her creative mind at work. From start to finish, she took about an hour to compose it. At one stage when she was momentarily at a loss for the right word, I suggested one that fits, although it's probably not the most appropriate. All the same it gave me a slight feeling of sharing in the creative act. Another fact worth mentioning is that when I showed this poem to my editor at Oxford University Press, he remarked that she has made very successful use of a most unusual rhyming scheme. He has a master's degree in literature and modern languages, so his opinion on this is worth respecting.

I'll say something else about salmon migrations and spawning. For adult fish to find their way back to the exact same little stream where they hatched out of an egg several years earlier, is a biological miracle; it can be explained by some sort of very powerful chemical tropism. The headwaters of every river must presumably have its own unique combination of chemicals and organic matter that emits a tracer in the form of smell or taste which distinguishes it from all other streams. We see this process in action in a small pond beside the Rideau Canal, a few hundred metres from our condominium. When the locks are closed a kilometre downstream and the Canal is filled, water flows into this pond that has been dry all winter. And every spring when the pond fills with water, within days it is crammed with dozens of large catfish and carp, each more than a metre in length, and for a few weeks the gravel and muddy bottom of the pond are constantly agitated by spawning fish. But this explanation begs more profound questions: Why is this return to the birthplace so important in perpetuating the species? How did the phenomenon get started in the first place? Does this awe-inspiring phenomenon shed any light on the nature of evolutionary biology? Perhaps marine biologists can answer these questions. If they can, I'd love to know what they say.