Whale
November. On the shore, a low curved thing—
a humpback whale, bloodied by rocks, slate-colored
with grooves like fluted tile, overcome
by ship strikes: the eye, small for his size,
wide open still but glassily unseeing,
the cavernous mouth shut, a panoply
of acorn barnacles stuck to the back,
shining like jewels. Just yesterday I’d seen
one like him surfacing, the tail like wings,
ready to blow, spurting a cloud of stream
fanned by the wind. I could believe
that once he was revered, a Chinese deity,
Hebrew Leviathan, Inuit god,
his oval scratched on ancient reddish rock
with a prayer for long life. On that day,
gulls shrieked above the orange rind of sun,
the sky ash-white. My sneakers dug in sand
trackless, with cracked ice, as I remembered
years back, how you and I ran down to sea,
laughing. I thought not much of death,
nor after that, until the day you fell.
I could not lift you. Waiting for the ambulance,
I studied your face and touched your bony
shoulders. Help came faster for the whale,
for though police may slight the wounded gull,
they’ll hurry to attend this large an animal.
Waves churned around the giant carcass
as Lilliputian workers grappled ropes,
and, while a crowd looked on, a yellow crane
hoisted him up and sent him back to sea
for nourishment of smaller fish. At last,
thawed from my frozen stare, I turned away.
The team obeyed your wish, no respiration.
I did not want to hear that you were dead.
Murmuration,
it’s called, for when you think you see
a scarf dancer, a scorpion, or a cloud
gone charcoal in pale sky—and oh, they’re starlings,
passing in a flight that signifies
world’s end or world’s beginning, protean
shapes of a giant hawk, blank pages turning.
When they appear, all earthly things defer:
feathery cedars bow in wind; hangdog azaleas
raise bare stalks, forsythias lift their yellows.
The clammer looks up, leaning on his rake;
the politician stops his speech to followers
who follow now a new inconstancy.
Just as we stay put, we marvel at change:
figures alter, ruled not by geometry
but by some inner order. And ambiguous.
Is that mass an angel’s robe or a shroud?
Answers are endings, and endings threaten,
death everywhere. These little stars are questioners,
unenders, probers. Their forms transform
and make it new. Starlings, you are enchanted
for change is to enchant and chant is song.