How it begins

A man and a woman press close as flowers

press to the pages of a book      her pale foot slips

from its sandal in the vaulted space of a kiss

and the way his hands hold her face

is the way leaves hold a bud before it flowers

Now this

A woman alone in a crowd watches

a strong brown river struggle to hold

the whale that swam down the city’s glittering throat

and the air presses

heavy as grief against her enormous softness

And if a woman and a boy stand before a glass coffin that holds

the bones of a northern bottlenose whale

the softness of his hand will be enormous

as she tells him how a story that began with a kiss

despite the enormous hole at its heart            can hold a boy

and a river that began with rainwater or snowmelt

can briefly hold a whale before letting it go

to spill from its mouth into the ocean

stories of whales and boys and all it has known

from The Glimmer