Whales have run aground off Cape Cod again.
What if God created them for us as metaphor?
How like us they are, beached and prostrate,
sand shifting under them with every wave
from heaven. Bloated and murder to move,
they slowly rot in the blurry sunshine, victims
of distress we can’t fathom. All we can think
to say is beware the giant squid, the seaquake,
beware sickness in your leaders. Beware the dark-
eyed shark, sonar’s ping and Japan’s traditional hunger.
The rusty bows of ghost ships
are singing through the water.
This poem first appeared in Lake Johnson Park’s Interpretive Poetry Trail.
—
John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Night Wing Over Metropolitan Area, Domestic Garden, Anticipate the Coming Reservoir, and Lives of Water, all with Carnegie Mellon UP. His poetry and essays appear in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Magazine, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Blackbird, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals, anthologies, and textbooks. He is a Professor of English at East Carolina University.
