Go, and sit on a slope built from tiny shards of uncountable shells.
Sit and watch the early gray whales migrate northward—the males, the females without young.
Watch and discover that what is called a fluke happens more than you’d expect.
In that discovery, choose one whale and follow her through a cycle of three blows then a breach.
Following her, notice how puny is the portion of ocean she crosses in that cycle—just the width of your hand, held up against the horizon.
Notice, as you try to imagine how many knuckle-width spans are needed to equal the distance she swims every year from Baja to Alaska and back again, that you begin to tremble inside.
Consider, as you tremble, that this is your body in awe.
—
Kelly Lenox (The Brightest Rock, 2017) writes poetry and prose in Oregon. Her work appears in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Cold Mountain, RHINO, EcoTheo Review and elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Kelly publishes “Mama Ephemera’s Muddy Feet” on Substack (kellylenox.substack.com) and is a science editor at the National Institutes of Health.
