Rodos, or Where have all the Salmon gone?

The other day I heard a report about the disastrous failure of this summer's sockeye salmon run in BC. In what is being described as an ecological catastrophe, more than 9 million sockeye failed to return to their spawning grounds on the Fraser River this July.

For what they're worth, I've shared some words before about how followers of Jesus might let their faith inform their response to ecological isues like these. For what they're worth. Our words alone won't recreate 9 million sockeye salmon ex nihilio. (Though my faith assures me that there's One whose Word can. Come Lord Jesus, come.)


How do 9 million fish simply vanish? No one really knows, though all the usual suspects- water contamination, global warming, human encroachment- are standing in the police line up.


But I think I've seen the perpetrator. I can point it out.

It was about 12 years ago. My wife and I were backpacking through Europe and we were waiting for a ferry in Rodos, Greece. While we waited I watched these two guys fish a squid out of the water kind of kick it back and forth between them. For no particular reason. A game. Bored. And bored, they wandered off leaving the squid drying out to die in the sun.

Human indiffence.

It was one of those weird (in the Anglo-Saxon sense) moments that somehow sear themselves into your imagination. A glimpse behind the veil of the every-day at the ache deep down in things that we're a part of. Years later I wrote this poem about that day. Thinking today about 9 million fish gone without a trace, I thought I'd post it here.


For what it's worth.


Rodos


And shining in our innocence we strolled among
That ancient Grecian heat and down
Along the chalky crusade walls that glower
Spiked and shaded on the greasy water
Of the bay at Rodos Town:

Saw wide-eyed tourists, fresh from yesterday
The ebony Santorini slopes, tomorrow then
Onto that monumental monastery,
At John of Patmos' prison--
Today they tumble groggy from the ferry:

Along the antique walls they wander,
Cameras shutter through the shaded labyrinth
Of ivied green and purple flowers,
Narrow cobbled streets and arching bowers
Snapping blushing postcard scenes of plunder.


I watch two night-eyed Grecians laughing
Plunge their hands into the greasy slick--
Still laughing fling from bay to cobbles,
A bulbous, rock-hued squid whose bubbles
Clear to black with fearful ink grow thick:

Vain clots of tar spread oozing
Fearful from the flitting gills--
In sport they nudge it through the dust, till loosing
Interest, leave it wheezing liquid spouts of night
To find another victim of their choosing:

The puddle of its dying flowing
Black across the cobbles from the blinking gills--
While winking camera eyes intent on seeing
Orange sunsets blushing the Aegean
Miss a gasping squid beneath their going.


And yet one lonely white clad tourist stops,
The eye of Helios, that ancient heat
Bright on his pristine shirt, he fingering
A hat in nervous hands, reaches lingering
Towards the dying squid beneath his feet:

A furtive glance along the pier,
His shiny, sunburned head dips down--
Oblivious the crowds rush on to leer
About the ancient sights at Rodos Town --
He plucks it from the stones with nervous fear:

And he: precarious between his thumb
And index finger hangs the squid, its ink
Like tears of oil shining through the air--
His squeamish arm extended, flings it where
The tender water lulls its death to numb.


And yet a stain of ink is left, a greasy blot--
Of spreading night, of human brutishness--
A dark and creeping stain of ink unseen--

Not over cobbles, dust or dirt
Alone but on the very stony knot
Of greed, indifference and hurt
That is our coursing heart-- a stain of brokenness
No single act compassionate could scour clean.