Swimming, diving, sinking

Through each clear and strong wave.

The largest fish on Earth; the sea’s king.

Something prehistoric and brave.

 

You glide effortlessly, streamline,

Blue-gray skin speckled with stars

Mouth agape as though in awe

While you yourself are so sublime.

 

Do you know what lies past the shore?

Past the reefs, up over the sandbars,

Are you aware of what watches you?

The ones who hurt you?

 

More and more, your kin are killed

Boat propellers, stray nets, captivity,

Pollution, human aggressivity…

But you’ve never once acted ill-willed.

 

Humans want to swim with you,

Observe you, learn everything about you.

You, you, you… it’s an obsession.

Isn’t it frightening?

Yet you swim with us so peacefully

Calmly, slowly, serenely.

Are you so kind as to not hold a grudge,

Or blissful, ignorant of what we’ve done?

 

My dream is to throw on scuba gear

And join you in the depths below

Sidle up alongside you as you roam,

Meet you in the eye, and feel so small

 

So small that I would be scared, but also

So tremendously filled with wonder.

How you are a real creature, as vast,

Immeasurable, and mysterious as you are?

 

You are forty feet long.

The size of a school bus.

Longer than 7 people lying head-to-toe.

36.4 pages of paper laid end-to-end long.

 

This poem is just 2/36.4th of your length.

How can I hope to honor you in such small space,

When you are such a grand leviathan?

My words lack enough strength.

 

Some “honor” you by tracking you down,

Letting dozens of divers jump into the sea

To swarm you with flash photography

And follow you desperately around.

 

If I swim with you someday

I will not go on the boat of a dozen divers.

I will not chase you.

You will have found me by chance.

 

If you do, there will certainly be

No fishing nets and no flash photography.

Just the two of us, mammal and fish,

Alone in the deep, dark blue.

 

It will look like the night sky underwater.

As you swim, the stars on your sides

And black holes held within your eyes

Just as grand as the cosmos.

 

In that moment, I know I will not see stars

The same way ever again.

I will think only of your constellation body

And how you took the time to behold me.

 

We spend our lives looking up at the stars

But fail to consider the possibility

That they might look back at us

With the same curiosity and consideration.

 

When you slowly turn to swim away,

I will watch you leave silently.

I will not chase you.

 

I cannot chase the stars.