Healing Within the Blur

I first heard the poem Salmon Boy on a tape presentation by David Whyte on the Imagination. The link below will take you to the complete poem by David
Wagoner (Traveling Light COLLECTED AND NEW POEMS by David Wagoner)

On the theme of radical grounding, the last half of this retelling of the Sechelt Nation legend of Salmon Boy captures a moment in the life cycle of Salmon Boy not to be forgotten.

In the poem opening, a human boy finds himself miraculously transformed into a salmon and joining with the Salmon People, swimming downstream and out into the ocean. Following their season of feeding and being in the great ocean, the time to re-enter the river comes:

“… and the Salmon People swam,

Tasting sweet, salt-less wind under the water,

Opening their mouths again to the river’s mouth,

And Salmon Boy followed, full-bellied, not afraid.

He swam fastest of all. He leaped into the air

And smacked his blue-green silvery side, crying Eyo!

I jump! again and again. Oh, he was Salmon Boy!

He could breath everything! He could see everything!

He could eat everything! And then his father speared him.

He lay on the riverbank with his eyes open,

Saying nothing while his father emptied his belly.

He said nothing when his mother opened him wide

To dry in the sun. He was full of the sun.

All day he dried on sticks, staring upriver.”

One of the very helpful points David Whyte offered in his discussion of the symbolism in this poem was to make a distinction about the father referenced in And then his father speared him. While we could think about the personal father, it shifts the meaning radically to consider this as a reference to the Great Father, or Spirit, or the Powers that show up from the Mystery in the service of initiation and transformation.

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