Milk creature, she has navigated the world
by whale map, this ancient mother,
and we see ourselves
inside the large dark eye
that takes our human measure,
history unspeakable,
and nothing to hide behind.
What moves the waves we cannot see,
nor can we know what moves a whale
to rise upward to the daughters of her enemies
except for faith in air,
and we sit in the boat for hours now,
blown by breeze and tide,
moved by the mystery that, like all mystery,
could sink or drown us.
Beneath water is the blue, infinite
light from the bottom of ocean.
No one returns from there unchanged
by everything larger, that dark eye
that fixed us in its gaze, the clouds
behind us, the wind-breath of a stormy world,
the exquisite smell of fish and krill
from inside a great life.
I want you to know they are beautiful,
the songs from beneath this world,
as we sit in the boat,
held in the fold of its song,
lost in the mist of its breath.