Our boat set out
at 10 PM to look
for whales
a solo minke
then a chorus
of humpbacks
feeding so close
to shore they
seemed to rub
their bellies
on the beach
flippering
as they lunged
to forage fish.
Gulls called
and squawked
overhead in the
pink grace of
dusk light and
our boatload
sang out yelps
and whoops and
some stone dead
stares all tuned to
the spectacle of
black sheen rising
and slipping under
percussion of massive
blows the breath
relieved after
deeper dives.
The whale once
lived on land
returned to sea
but never learned
to be a fish with gills
and wholly present
in the underneath. No
it rises to meet us
still wed to air.
—
Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of six books of poetry and five books of nonfiction, most recently A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, & The Sardine Dress. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors. She recently received a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation, which sent her to San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. She is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona.
