Montague's "Upstream"

UPSTREAM

Northwards, annually,
a journeying back,
the salmon's leap
& pull to the source:
my wife, from the shore
at Roche's Point, calls
John, come in, come home,
your mother is dead.

We pull the curragh
into shallow water,
haul her above tide
level, two sets of lean
insect legs stumbling
up the stony beach,
the curve of the boat
heavy on our napes
before we lift her
high on the trestles,
then store the long,
light oars, deliberately 
neat and calm in crisis,
keeping the mind busy.

Under the lighthouse dome
the strangeness of Evelyn
weeping for someone
she has never known --
her child's grandmother --
while I stand, dryeyed,
phoning and phoning a cousin
until, cursing, I turn
to feel his shadow loom
across the threshold.

Secret, lonely messages
along the air, older than
humming telephone wires,
blood talk, neglected 
affinities of family,
antennae of instinct
reaching through space,
first intelligence.

(The night O Riada dies
a friend wakes up in 
the South of France,
feeling a great lightness,
a bird taking off.)

--John Montague