WHALE

Logging, spy-hopping, bubble-netting. You wave flipper-legs; your breath clouds blow in the bay.

You sound: your humpy back, tiny hipbones hidden, your flukes up like splaying feet.

Your lunging, great hungers, mysterious love affairs. You sing where we cannot go.

You must be awake to breathe.

Your carcass once on a stony beach. Baleen fabric, skull bone cave, the long purple leather of your skin.