Stalk, limb, sea scum, wrack – he scoops a clump, binds it with plastic strands of pink and orange twine, and over hours hides himself, reedy, worming, within the capillaries of it mass, this redd, this birth rite. In discomfort, that’s where imagination poaches him, etiolate, a filament of joy, a code of patient light, anxious for the shadow’s callous quickening, though at its instant unawares. The eyed egg on dream-watch sources smithing tongues, hammer-works each scale of salmon song, armour for the song of love and loss he must sing from alevin to parr to smolt.
Redd: nest where salmon lay and fertilise their eggs
Eyed egg: stage of egg development when the eyes can be clearly seen
Alevin, parr, smolt: stages in the development of the salmon fish from fry to one year-old fish migrating from the river to the sea, from fresh to salt water
