Urban River Run
“Who hears the fishes when they cry?”
Thoreau said,
after paddling the Concord and Merrimack
for two weeks with his brother John,
years before his cabin and beans, before he accidentally set the woods on fire.
He woke to sunrise on the water rippling
his canoe in light soft as a ripe peach,
pushed off into cold water rinsing him of Concord’s orderly
prosperity,
nothing but the lure of what he didn’t know ahead of him,
what he would see that would change him —
~
Immigrants from the Pilgrims onward
lived on river herring, shad, salmon.
Silver running they’d called
the spring herring migrations so abundant
they colored the rivers,
fish swarming inland from the Atlantic,
back to their home rivers to spawn,
then back to the sea.
Instead Henry saw few of the fish of his childhood,
their paths trapped behind dams,
thinned out and ghostly—
an ancient food chain vanishing beneath his paddle.
~
Henry and John called for the good men of Sudbury, Wayland,
and Concord to take a crowbar to the Billerica dam.
Then Henry went to the woods to write about river fish.
~
At the Upper Mystic River Dam, my husband and I stand on metal grates
looking down into a fish ladder —
Portal for Alewife river herring trying to reach
the upper lake where seagulls loop and dive.
A woman plays guitar and sings, a man and boy squat to count
herring with us, but the fish hide today.
The river is warming, their time to get here is shortening.
And I can’t stay in the heat.
A volunteer holds up a large chart: 590,000 counted so far this census:
“Before the fish ladder, we hauled them up in buckets.
At least 19,000 one year. The herring brigades.”
Henry and John, I can see you out here, pails in hand.
~
Our guide points out a skinny runway for American eels:
they land in a small metal box
after wiggling up.
The box is empty, but she notes: 13,200 eelsin 2013.
They swam 1,000 miles from the Sargasso Sea to mature here.
Dad would have loved this,
would have hauled buckets at eighty,
sat in the hot sun today counting.
Emma’s favorite sushi is Japanese eel —
in Kyoto she ate it for breakfast
with seaweed and raw eggs.
She sends me pictures of eel plates at dinners in Gifu City,
where cormorants tethered to rods
catch fish for tourists.
My daughter would be a fish counter, if she were here.
~
At home, I watch videos of the fish via underwater cameras.
While I rest my swollen ankle on the ottoman,
they sleek-tail-it upstream nearby,
next to roads jammed with traffic.
Become a counter now the screen reads — In your own home
I’ve counted thirty-two in ten seconds! —
I record what I’ve seen.
I tighten the Velcro snaps on my Tribute Wrap,
invented in Amsterdam,
its internal ribs a ladder
boosting my stubborn lymph
from ankle to knee.
And suddenly I think I see five American eels slither by,
grayish green and hard to spot.
But no, this is river grass.
No one has seen them spawn in the Sargasso Sea,
no one is sure how they find their way to North American rivers —
But more eels will land in the metal box and someone will ease them
into the Upper Mystic Lake
where bass, cormorants, and gulls
will hunt them,
where black-crowned night herons
can eat them close to shore.
~
I remember the eels my father caught in New Jersey
and cooked on the grill, slimy
and curved like pool noodles.
I can barely look at Emma’s plate when she eats eel,
even in their glassy young stage of life.
The Chinese catch them to sell to the Japanese.
If Dad were here, he’d try to save this river.
~
Henry addressed the river fish:
“Keep a stiff fin, then, and stem all the tides thou mayst meet.”
~
When I worry about my daughters far from home,
I can count fish at my river.
When I worry about my foot swelling in the heat,
I can count fish in my living room.
When the stink of traffic and gas leaks on Massachusetts Avenue
makes me long for the ocean,
I can go to the Mystic Lakes and watch a blue heron on shore.
I can help pull up Oriental bittersweet.
I can prepare for the run back to the sea.