Chinook Salmon Hatchery at Whiskey Creek
A Poem by Holly Hunt
Two thousand four-inch hatchlings
blind-sided this leaning morning
sideways from a collision
with some midnight upstream poison.
They grow too sick to peddle
letting go of the upright way
in the mystery infiltration.
In this hour of slowing stiffened fins
they brake ranks and float away
elliptical under the feathered sun
their drooping awol mouths open to oblivion.
Their agate eyes burn in estrangement
with the gnostic stare of the prophets
who could not foresee this ending--
all be wind drift to the tank rim.
Holly Hunt is a poet and essayist from the Ouachita Mountains in central Arkansas. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and other literary journals in print and online. Her satirical essays have been published in The Kansas City Star, The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Georgia Review, and other journals. She holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize for work published by the Academy. She studied an additional two years with James Dickey on a fellowship at the University of South Carolina. Miller Williams called her a Daughter of Blake, and he poetic vision is strongly influenced by Blake and Kenneth Patchen, which places her in the company of other contemporary mystic poets.
