While walking with friend Don to our city’s fine Remembrance Day service last Thursday my question to him was inspired by a sentence or two from Carl Safina’s book, ‘song for the blue ocean.’
After seeing a salmon clubbed Safina writes:
“The gleaming fish goes still in a spreading pool of blood. This animal is bullet-shaped, sleek, strong-looking. Its back is purplish black. The sides, bright silver.”
“In the transition zone between the purple-black and silver, each scale is lavender or purple, in a different luminously iridescent shade, and framed in black. These scales together make a miniature gallery of abstract paintings, like an exhibit of similar lacquered works by the same artist, gathered and brilliantly displayed side by side so that the slight variations among them set up a subtle shimmer that draws the eye.”
["Wooden fish by John Doherty, Rosseau, Ontario": photo GH]
“With a magnifying glass, one could enter this gallery and stroll at leisure.”
I thought his words were intriguing. Fish scales as wondrous art. A walk through a gallery with magnifying glass in hand.
My margin notes read:
“We should see FISH as ART.”
But first, I’d have to catch or see or hold a salmon.
Thus my question to espresso.
Have you seen a live salmon? Have you held one?
***
Within 2 or 3 years I should find myself standing on Vancouver Island in a spot my father saw “bank to bank salmon.”
Maybe then will be my chance to see even one.
See right side margin - Read This: song for the blue ocean
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