Pink Salmon

Adult pink humpback salmon lose their sheen
  as they prepare to spawn. As they leave
        the ocean, the river strips
        the metal in layered rips
  from their sides—a release in the body's weave,
the gown snags, gives out, collapses—blue-green

gives way to gray. The light did that in the room
  where your body last covered mine.
        Below the ground, the gravel
        met the windows. I'd travel
  far—in that grotto, through dim-lit brine
as night seeped in—I'd go upstream, through flume

and rock, pressing toward where the water thinned
  and lost its bite. Cold work, to undress
        then shed the body too.
        but then I couldn't leave you,
  who had me by the tail. I'd regress
by dark, my blackening form no longer finned.

Copyright © 2003 Cecily Parks All rights reserved
from The Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission