When beavers are threatened—
water moves faster, darts straighter, stops
its slow seesaw into sloughs and side channels
and stops the smock and linger of pond racket,
less water spreads across floodplains, less plants
root, edgewater flowers not stationed to bloom,
less birdsong, less chatter, less surface skimmer,
less water stored underground, less summer
seepage, more fire, less swamp, less leaf-huddle,
stick hovel, less hidey-holes for native fish, less
sediment, less firmament, less space for Sockeye
who spend half their lives in fresh streams, who
need deep slow water to hide from predators
and feast, to rest from raging spring currents,
less silver-maroon braids of water & matter, less
refuge, less salmon, who in a healthy river have
so little chance to survive the run, and when the
slick runs overfast, life is chased right out of it,
and when beavers cannot be restored quickly
enough to their woodsy-banksy lives—those
sweet-hunkered fiberworkers crafting detritus
into lattice and cave—whose communal busying
changes time-flow into longshore drift and spawn,
the water stops breaking, the soil-rich pools empty,
the salmon the salmon the salmon the salmon
less full less welcome, less shallows for thousands
of eggs laid in redds, less silt for young who grow
under gravel, so that beaver “analogs” mimic
their structures, beavers without beavers, restoring
riparian dams so the waters might wait for the
furred sod-lifters to return to the river’s lap and
grind and gather—hear it—so the Sockeye will
continue on, the Sockeye who are sometimes swiped
by bear paws and taken deep into wood, and who
then feed the forest, their nitrogen found in the salt
heart of the Sempervirens.Jennifer K. Sweeney (she/her) is the author of five poetry collections: Foxlogic, Fireweed (Backwaters Press/Univ. of Nebraska), Little Spells, How to Live on Bread and Music, which received the James Laughlin Award, the Perugia Press Prize and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, and Salt Memory. The collaborative chapbook, Dear Question, with L.I. Henley, was published in late 2024 from Glass Lyre Press. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared widely in journals, most recently in About Place, Cider Press Review, Guesthouse, Orion, Poetry Northwest, Rogue Agent, Sixth Finch, The Shore, Terrain, Waxwing.
