The whale she journeys out
to waters dark and gray
sings to herself once the
shoreline is far away
Greenland tides echo her
songs for two hundred years
harpoon marks on her back
unknown, her thoughts and fears
what do her songs convey
why and to whom she sings
frigid arctic currents
carry her fluid hymns
intricate melodies
coursing beneath the ice
ambergris vignettes does
her balene brain devise
the whale she weaves her dreams
her body twists and rolls
her silky body scraped
by craggy hidden shoals
the whale she wallows in
sadness as dense as she
her body commingled
with her own misery
from ships we gaze upon
pockmarks along her frame
no one shall crack the code
of the whale’s sad refrain