It muscles through long fins
this catch in the spine that’s home.
Across wide seas particles in breeze
assist, insist the trail is found
to natal rivers.
Three thousand miles out the pouting
mouth tastes home in the rain,
home in the brain,
home in flexed bones, speckled skin,
in coiled clouds spitting homewaters
on ocean swell;
casts the smell of a thousand
rivers while only one will do.
Song of home ripples on scales
ancient as river beds,
familiar as the redd,
the hatching ground that
wills them back to sow
seed, to spawn,
to round out life,
die spent in the scent
of home.