Whale Dream

In the dream,      I’m pinned beneath the whale’s tongue.
Her song echoes through me and my bones shift, toes shattering
and reassembling in strange, new configurations.          You’re up top, clinging
                         to her briny back as she breaches

                              the surface.

You play narrator through the blowhole:
          The air is clean, you sing,
       and the sky is quilted.
        The sea is whistling.
             Can you hear it?   But I am deaf to it all.

The tongue lifts, and the baleen shimmer
with bacteria I shouldn’t be able to see, but do.
                We’re kin now.

       You reach down from her mouth ceiling, your hand
       dangling like the master of some giant, unyielding puppet.

But it’s too late.

The whale swallows, and I am carried
   deeper into her living cave.          You never stop reaching,
                    as if will were a worthy opponent
                      to a beast such as this.