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2020-09-21T12:16:54-07:00September 18th, 2020|Musings on life|

Mother orca

Long black hulk
with your skin like lacquer
and your sad white eye,
you held your calf
as you swam
for seventeen days
after she died,
diving down deep
into the quiet ocean
to retrieve her still body
every time she slipped
off your nose.

How did you sleep,
I wonder,
or perhaps you didn’t,
some contortion
of grief or will,
a fierce hope
for a miracle
and you couldn’t risk
missing it.

And now,
two years later,
as everyone is adding up
the horrible things
this year keeps pulling
out of its pockets,

you are spotted
swimming with a new baby,
a healthy calf,
who splashes beside you,
and nuzzles that exact spot
that must still remember the weight
of that memory
of those seventeen days
on the slope
of your face,

and I am so happy for you,
and for us,
for the reminder
that beautiful times
will come.

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