Rob Taylor reads “Harrison River Valley, November”

First the salmon are a smell, then a sound, 
then dorsal fins: a symphony of miniature 
Jaws fast cuts. Eagles gorge upon the living, 
seagulls tug apart the nearly dead. Our children 
stand transfixed. We offer them our meagre facts. 
A belly-up chinook spasms back to life each time 
another salmon tries to pass. A whole life spent 
strengthening one muscle, and then you let it slack? 
Rain starts to fall. Its tiny circles meet the salmon’s 
thrashing and the wakes of milling gulls until the river’s 
current seems to flow all ways at once. We turn back 
past carcasses a recent flood tossed higher 
on the shore. The truly dead, plucked blind by crows. 
I ask the children if they think it’s strange, all this, 
but they’ve walked on ahead and do not hear. 
Fog descends until it disappears.

Dessa Bayrock on “Harrison River Valley, November”

Taylor leverages descriptive viscerality in this poem — an almost mathematical clarity that reminds us, like a sonnet, that math is closer to art than science. “Harrison River Valley, November” is a meditation on life cycles, on curiosity, on the patterns we follow both thinkingly and unthinkingly. It is also scientifically proven to make anyone who hails from British Columbia homesick, especially if they are as far from home as the salmon are.

Bios

Rob Taylor

Rob Taylor is the author of five poetry collections, including Weather and The News. He is also the editor of What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation and Best Canadian Poetry 2019. Rob teaches creative writing at the University of the Fraser Valley, and lives with his family in Port Moody, BC, on the unceded territories of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.