The River Not Taken
A salmonid parody of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”
Two rivers diverged from a Cali Basin,
And sorry I could not swim both to expand my portfolio
And be one migrant, winter and spring
I smelled down one as far as I could
To where it might have borne my own natal growth;
Then took the other, just as clear,
And having perhaps the colder water,
Because it was rocky and wanted nests;
Though as for that sedimentation there
Had mucked them really about the same,
And both that spring equally lay
In gravel no nest had welled a redd.
Oh, I kept the other for another runner!
Yet knowing how pulse leads up the punch,
I doubted if I would ever come back.
I shall be spawning this with a death
Somewhere tectonic shifts and glacier retreats:
Two rivers diverged in a basin, and I —
I took the one less migrated by,
And that had made — a dam?
