Nature's Clockwork

 

Salmon smolts hatch and ride the

flippers of the river rolling to the sea

 

just as the red-mouth suckers

swim upward to tail-turn gravel

and spawn, leaving their DNA as ancient

as being a vertebrate, then feeding the eagles

with their dying.

 

This is the clockwork circle dance of

Nature, calling all to her intricate web

of symbiosis.  Nature tells time

 

only with the eons unfolding

her work, and here, you and I

 

together in this miracle of her art,

riding the complex hands

of Nature’s inscrutable watch.

 

J. Pratt-Walter

NaPoMo 4/12/2022