Anadromy
My grandma was pink-skinned, dark-eyed, mind like a magnet. She knew just where to go: all journeys lead you back home. With that up-river faith she leapt over obstacles with muscle and grace past vanishing forests past cow-trampled banks past claws and beaks and the rods and lines of men.
She knew about change as only a salmon can: how the body in its mutability must adapt from the wild dance of the ocean to the narrow creek need cell by cell, scale by scale each step in its own time.
HUSH, she would tell me, when my own compass needle had spun me off with its own centrifugal force. CELL BY CELL, SCALE BY SCALE. LOOK FOR THE STRONGEST CURRENT. FOLLOW THAT.
–Alexis White (1985-2014)
This is the poem, described by a dear friend, that sent me hurtling on this journey of vulnerability and radical honesty. I am looking for the strongest current. I am trying desperately to follow it.