Ancestral Pull

Ancestral Pull

Thomas Johnson-Medland

There are portions
of our days on this
earth-place in which
we return to the
streams of our beginnings.

Pushing hard against
the current of history
and the forces of innuendo
and ash.

Salmon taught us this
way to know; this way
of intuiting and crawling
along the bottom to
our homes.

Our souls swim back
to the waters from which
they have been spawned -

endlessly. All throughout
our lives.

They jump invisibly up
along the falls of deep
resistance and heavy flow;

getting to getting back
again and again.

They march themselves
back in our ichthian bodies

in phone calls and day dreams, 
in reunions and holidays,
in weddings and funerals
and more.

How many times have we
marked this passage -

feeling being
aware -

of this ancestral pull
to climb. Knowing this
ancient and lurking
passion to go back.

Back to the place
where the water smells
of the richest gravel
and our nourishment
comes in fat stored from
our time in the big waters.

Evolving back to
become what we had been
all along.

---

Thomas Johnson-Medland
Poet & Outdoorsman

Tom has had over fifty articles and poems published across a variety of journals and magazines. He has also had seventeen books published to date - eleven of these are volumes of poetry. The most recent volume RIVER BENDING: Poems of the Delaware River and Her Tributaries, published with Wipf and Stock Publishers. You can read more about Tom and his works at https://linktr.ee/tomjm.poet

Photography by Cottonbro