Five Salmon Dancing

1. Let us start like this: there are three salmon dancing in the river. Of course, they are not dancing, but let us also say there is a young man standing on the undercut bank of that river. He is holding the slim waist of a vine maple and watching the salmon with the same clutching intensity as he does the election. Let us say he would like to think the salmon are dancing. 2. So let us start like this: there are three salmon mating in the river. The young man knows the jargon. He knows the males are engaged in intersexual competition. He knows the female is digging out a redd in the gravel substrate with the paddle of her tail. She will then lay her eggs in the disturbed sediment, and the victorious male will spill his milt in the water over them. The young man is reminded of something, perhaps apocryphal, that his cousin once told him – that the ocean is at least one per cent whale sperm. 3. But let us start like this: there are three salmon courting in the river. The male salmon…