In the spring of my daughter’s tenth year she studied spotted salamanders,
how with the first warm rain they crossed a busy road at night, propelled
by magnetic and chemical signals to find their birth pool, a half mile
from the pile of rotted leaves and bark where they slept, not stopping
at other ponds until they reached home waters. She designed a sign
to warn cars and a tunnel was built under the road that, spring
after spring, was plastered with flattened bodies like ink blots.
By then her father had stopped calling, and a lawyer tried to extract
monthly payments. I applied for fuel assistance when our wood ran
out. In another state his next wife delivered their baby. My daughter
wanted to visit. She wore a mask and held the swaddled infant
introduced as her sister, before returning to our cottage where
we bundled in coats like stranded travelers while cold drafts whistled
through the walls. After laying eggs in her natal pond, the mother salamander
returns to the woods alone. When her young can survive on land, they leave
to mature for four or five years before they attempt the unmapped migration.
One spring night in my daughter’s eighteenth year, the phone startled
me awake, an accident, the car totaled, but saved from tumbling down
a bridge embankment, my daughter and friends shaken but uninjured.
Spotted salamanders navigate the annual journey for eighteen years, but
only if they traverse that road in 88 seconds. Eighteen years of predators,
drought, freeze, the eager hands of children, but only
if they survive the crossing.
–
Gail Thomas is the author of Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals, and awards include the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, the Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read.”