Seasonal Viscera

A half masticated salmon carcass lay amongst the crystal stripped granite stones; the caudal fin perfectly intact, still glimmering in the waning light but the spine jutting out absent the head, drapped in viscera was a counterbalance to the melancholic beauty of falling leaves although no less seasonal. Standing over the remains mentally back tracking it's route back out to sea, no great distance for a fish such as this, marveling at the physiological metamorphosis it had to endure to make the transition from salt to freshwater only to spawn and die on this bend of this particular river. Making use of this common thing to strain trite meaning from a tired metaphor would be easy, too easy. I've been to that bend in that river every season for a full year and am only now beginning to see. It takes time to know a thing, less time to be enamored by it, and love is born of knowing: I love it all the more for the corpse rotting on it's shore.