Shoring

The whales are beaching themselves again,
hurling up out of the storm swell of green-black
waves onto Nantuckets desolate South Shore,
onto the sand frozen almost firm and the scattered ice
patches with their pin-point reduction of star-
light.  Pilot Whales, their black hulks heaving toward

the last gasping breath, as though flinging toward
immeasurable distances that breath again and again
until, in some far galaxy, a star
shudders. And on Earth, the whales flail their great black
flukes against the sand, digging in under ice
as though trying to get a toe-hold on the shore,

on something essential embodied in the shore.
An almost human crying rises from whale toward
whale, so that the air tolls with the sound of crying and of ice
breaking, until finally the sun cracks through night again
and the rose- coral dawn shatters the black
seascape. Still overhead, a waning star

and a crowd approaches as though star-
struck by something unexplainable being played out on that shore.
A veterinarian, false hope in his black satchel 
and a tired young man from Greenpeace walk toward
the weak animals, heads bent. Again
the crying. Storm-bound islanders stare into black ice

eyes as though seeing themselves there, and with minds like ice
points, the scientists, who must know the cause of a star
falling, the depth of a wave, why the tide pulls again
repeatedly at even the firmest shore,
offer up conceits about storms, sickness and the forced swim toward
shallows. While in New England living rooms, the black

screens of televisions light up with images of black 
bodies stranded and helpless on desert ice,
so that a woman pauses on her way toward
the stairs, touched, almost as if this star-
crossed suicide were her own. And on the shore,

the whales wait, until moved again
by some crossed instinct, black as a dying sea, a dead star—
they fall silent and shudder toward death.

 

© Patricia Fargnoli