Last Song for the Salmon

The salmon, the leaper
Is now just about gone.
Because the rapids that thundered
Are now still as ponds.
Concrete walls tall as prisons
Called dams keep them out.
Like mall parking lots
Where trees used to sprout.

And we sing our song for the salmon.

No one has an answer
No one has a plan.
We all know who did it
But we can't find the man.
He's hiding out somewhere
We choose not to see.
But he's always been standing
between you and me.

And we sing our song for the salmon.

I once waded a month
To put a hook in your mouth.
You had fought for an hour
When I pulled you out.
You died in my hands
And your eyes quietly closed.
What I felt I won't tell
What you thought no one knows.

And we sing our song for the salmon.

You were the last of your kind
And now I am too.
The last of my kind
To ever know you.
Like a dream disappears
Once you're awake
Like the branch that you bend
Is the one that you break.

And we sing our song for the salmon.

As the memories wash out
The ignorance flows.
In a flood down the river
To the ocean it goes.
If excuses were salmon
We'd have quite a few.
They'd be long as our legs
And wearing our clothes.

And we sing our song for the salmon.

If I was the river
And you were the fish.
I'd let you swim up and down me
And do as you wish.
Because without you
There's not much left of me
Just a long lonely ditch
Falling into the sea.

And we sing our song for the salmon.

We sing our song for the salmon.

So we sing our last song for the salmon.

-- Douglas Watts, 9/18/2010.
Cushnoc, Kennebec River, Augusta, Maine.