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by Mary Kay Rummel They say the whale slammed into a ship. Her great grey corpse floated east twenty-six miles, carried by Channel tides and currents to this shingled beach. In our minds the whale still heaves against splatter and squall, erupting, falling back, power translating to bone and fat and muscle until the driving spirit leaves. We can't turn away, but breach ourselves, heaving sideways out of old visions, seeing with ears and noses. In the silence below all things, those few moments of sunrise— anemone opening deep purple melody of oil-shining streets— we believe in muscle, hidden bone and soft, soft flesh. Every scrap of clothing worn near the body has to be burned. Even our shoes reek of oily decay spilling into sand. Only the whale shaped trench remains to be bitten away by the sea that would have taken all. And we are left, lashed to hands and faces, breath cascading throat to lungs, simple and tortuous as the journey of water over rock now rising in the spray, shivering, plunging into silence, drifting seaward, always wanting like water, to be somewhere else. Copyright 2014. All rights reserved.
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