The waves today are whales:
curling flukes of foam
that dissolve and vanish forevermore
as each wave folds upon itself
to break at my feet in a rush of white
here on the Oregon shore.
These are the leviathans of the Pacific
become one with their ocean home,
but more than this: these journeying giants
have now become the ocean itself:
tails of water, tails of foam.
In my vision it is the waves
which take the forms of tails,
slapping and rushing at the sand
to beach themselves at last,
wet and exhausted on the shore.
There are no whales, not today.
Perhaps tomorrow,
if I walk this same stretch of shore I will see them:
plumes of mist in the grey distance,
cruising the tug of currents
to their feeding grounds in the north.
For today, I have the white tails of the waves
with their memories older than an age
to remind me of times before my own
when all was new and beginning,
and the whales, the slide of currents,
the great ocean’s roll
were all and everything,
and the floating moon and the island sun
and the whales and the waves and my soul,
then as now, were one.
