KATE YOUNG

Attenborough on Freshwater Salmon

She finds the voice calming as she waits

her eyes jumping from glassy pane

to a grainy screen in the Highlands

a scoop of scales, thrashing tails

twisting, leaping rocky cacophony

as they silver the Falls of Feugh.

The lens captures the shifting surge

as they journey from oceans

gene receptors keen in brine.

Cut to an underwater shot, image clear

in a freshwater creek where the salmon

return each year to their spawning.

It is here the female bellies the ground

lays her eggs in gravel beds, waits

for the cloud of fertilization.

ii

A sound from outside alerts her

draws her eyes from salmon to man

navigating his way back home.

She hears the crash, the clink of liquor

bags bulging either side of his spine

gaping like gills feeding his breathing

he stumbles on pebbles, flexes muscles

strengthened by running upstream

in the constant fight for survival

Note: The Falls of Feugh are located near Banchory in Aberdeenshire. The stone bridge overlooking the waterfall is a popular spot for locals and tourists to observe salmon running upstream.

Word Gatherer

I’m foraging, collecting fruit and flower to blend into alchemy, pattern to poetry – the rich aroma of earthiness.

I pluck blackberries, purple-plump and watch the juice bramble the trug leaving

its bruised stain on paper.

Elderberries bring flavour and fortune, the rich taste of well fermented verbs

or the root of a misplaced allusion.

In the undergrowth, I truffle Chanterelles concealed among leaves, waxed flutes elusive as words that moon-whisper.

Sweet Rosehips for fullness, antidote to spite and prickle-rash of nettle, the

bitterness of scorn on skin.

I add Meadowsweet and Oxeye Daisy as dressings for metaphors and myth

but avoid Hemlock’s poison-tongue.

Shapes flap, rise in babble. They jostle and howl as consonants and vowels

fight, demanding supremacy.

I strive to guide words into tercets or verse, allow them space to breathe – to

exhale their meaning into vacant air.

Kate Young’s poetry has appeared in journals and online. It was also included in Places of

Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published with Hedgehog Press. Find her on X Kateyoung12poet or her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk

Previous / Back to POETRY