Whale Fall

One dies.

Eschrichtius

robustus, gray,

of the sole living genus, of baleen,

of the family

Eschrichtiidae, slate

gray or darker,

and notable, now, for

gray-white patterned scars

left by parasites, two

blowholes “which can

create a distinctive

V-shaped

blow ... in calm wind conditions”;

and falls, as

it falls, as through blue breeze;

and swirls, light

as a tissue, drifting down—

down, through

the cool layers, the sifted light

of sea-wind-

warmed currents, loose galaxy

of whirling flecks, slow-

motion, in a haze;

in whose first stage, falling,

now, the “mobile

scavengers” drift alongside,

sleeper sharks

and thin hagfish

—or, as the book calls them,

“enrichment opportunists”—

come to feed

at the soft flanks and fat,

for weeks, as the

bones grow exposed, all

of them, spinning down ...

We might hear rain before the rain. Sirens.

Hail before it cracked the hundred panes.

Or lay our heads on the desks and listen

to our blood whispering in the woodgrain.

In 1963 the warnings are

piecemeal, part of the good day’s play or work.

We might need to cover our heads. Hold hands

in the hallway. Look away from the blast.

—

July 29, 2013: a sperm whale found deceased on the beach of

a small island off the coast of the Netherlands had dozens of

plastics bags, nine meters of rope, two long pieces of garden hose,

a couple of flower pots, and a plastic spray canister in its stomach.

—

I’m watching a hummingbird, bare thumb-

top—gray-green blur—dip to my feeder bulb

and dart off, over the barn, to a wire.

A. colubrus. Little serpent. I hear

the burr of wings; and already it’s back—

dips again, hovers there; sips now; attacks

the tube of red sugar-water until

bubbles aerate, like an aneurism.

—

June 28, 2016: an 80-foot blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus)

caught in 200 feet of fishnet, crab lines, channel buoys off the

coast of Orange County: lines cut through its mouth, wrapped

its fins. “Blue whales are typically thought to be more offshore

animals, and crabbing gear is thought to be more inshore, but

obviously the spatial overlap between those two is coming into

conflict,” explained Leigh Torres. “The fact that we see this

entanglement isn’t terribly surprising, though it is unique.”

—

Weeks I couldn’t sleep. Years I couldn’t waken.

I found a note I’d written one ill night.

pines shredded ice snow

such wind

rips the night

I run my tongue above my tooth, aching.

And know it’s coming back once more. The warning

—right cuspid, gum swollen, puffed as a pea—

two days before the viral fire, the toxic sea ...

—

March 23, 2016: 13 sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus)

beached themselves off the shallow coast at Tönning, Germany:

“We may never know the exact cause,” wrote Danny Groves.

Stomach contents: 43 feet of fishing net, 100 plastic bags,

golf balls, sweatpants, greenhouse glass sheeting, cigarette

butts, hypodermic needles, a plastic car engine cover, a bucket ...

—

Cottonwood seeds. Gnats’ wings in the sunlight.

Whirl of dust motes in the haze of still light.

If it were so simple as to drift down.

If it were so easy as getting up again.

Little bug, little serpent. The air slows

with summer thickness when you fly away.

And the feeder bobs there like a red buoy

on the green waters of a distant bay.

A drawer full of notes. Years trying to—

all night sweating

sheets so heavy burning—

600 lymph nodes

I know where you live—

She’s eighteen months old. Up, up? I’m afraid—

One of my titers read 2560

“Active.” “Acute.” “You really are sick.”

so weak—to pick her up. I pick her up—

Aggregate allergen: grasses, wheat, milk,

acidics, trees (?): multiple exclusion ...

Temp 103.7. Good night, moon—

After a sunny walk with her wagon—

next day— panting

testicles so swollen

freezing

system flushing itself—into the waves—

Aggregate infection: Liver. Kidney.

Heart sac. Spleen. Gut. Urinary tract. Neck ...

good night, night bird—far off—through the high pines—

In the second stage,

at 4,000 feet

(or 122

“atmospheres”),

weight suspends;

a heavy thing in one world

floats like willow seed in a breeze

in this,

a moving vast through

that darkness, silent ...

they don’t need

much else—oxygen, nor light—

the frilled shark

and fang-tooth, the spider crab,

the vampire squid, who strip the dead

down now

beyond bones

to the merest blueprint of

whale; slow down-spinning of

months, a year, more,

the hypoxic haze,

the “marine snow”

in a kind

of afterlife of weather—

drifting down of plankton, and

protists, soot,

sand, fecal matter in aggregates

“held

together by a

sugary mucus”—

all, sifting down,

through the aphotic zone;

and its vast weight,

once 40-plus tons, skin

“like a peeled hard-boiled egg,”

patched with orange

whale lice, white barnacles,

it too long since

sloughed, shed, dissolving as

particulate

snowfall, orbital,

in this new galaxy

of darknesses;

borne, like seed, floats down ...

I have been silent for a long time now.

You know I am serious about the whales.

You don’t know this. I floated there in stillness,

in white sheets. White boughs breaking. The pines

in ice and wind like a hammering pulse.

When I woke I couldn’t speak or make sense.

And when I slept again I didn’t sleep.

And more fires spreading through the body’s depths.

—

“Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific.”

National Geographic: These pieces of plastic are not necessarily

floating bottles, bags, and buoys, but “teeny-tiny pieces of plastic resembling

confetti.” 90% of sea birds consume it. “Over eight million tons of new plastic

trash finding its way into the oceans every year.”

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch moves in a clockwise direction,

like a toilet. It circulates an area of 7.7 million square miles.

“70% of marine debris sinks to the bottom of the ocean.”

New York Times: Plastiglomerate was “discovered” by Charles Moore,

a sea captain, surveying plastic washed up on a remote, polluted

stretch of sand on Hawaii’s Big Island. It is a new stone, a fusion

of natural and manufactured materials. “If [plastiglomerates] are

buried within the strata,” says Jan Zalasiewicz, an English geologist,

“I don’t see why they can’t persist in some form for millions of years.”

—

You’d think we’d learned enough to duck our heads.

(It’s time for arithmetic.) Okay, kids,

who can tell me what you get when you divide

a number by itself? Silence. Overhead

the hum of fluorescents. The swallowing sea

of storm clouds out the window beyond the trees.

What does it take to raise sufficient alarm?

When do you hide? Where do you fly from harm?

—

Aggregates increase “like snow.” Aggregation theory represents

a two-state system [“time for chemistry, kids”] ... to characterize

the formation of marine aggregates and the loss due to sinking:

where

· C₁ is the concentration of the cells

· r is the radius of each cell

· G is the shearing rate

· α is the stickiness coefficient

· g is the growth rate.

Thus, aggregation of marine particles is more prevalent when

cell and particle concentration is higher (e.g. algal blooms).

—

Do the math. That’s what the specialist said.

The first doctor winked. Some people just need

to get sick in order to relax. Thanks.

Your T cells go bat-crazy. They attack

the health host: it’s your immune system

out of control ... viral opportunism

running rampant through your lymph. It won’t stop.

You can’t sleep. Flushing toxins down the pipe ...

—

Wikipedia: marine snow is a variety of mostly organic matter,

including dead or dying animals, and plankton ... also plant parts

and degrading plant material. Because of the relatively long

residence time of the ocean’s thermohaline circulation, carbon

transported as marine snow into the aphotic zone by the biological

pump can remain out of contact ... for more than a thousand years.

A blue jay lands in the fringe tree. Sudden downfall of petals.

The massive galaxy of matter as the body floats down through

the ocean’s zones is granular, a snowy sand, agglomerate of

debris in slow orbit around the disintegrating husk of whale.

Here are the five most common “unnatural” causes of death.

Entanglement. Ship and propeller strikes. Commercial fishing

(i.e. human appetite). Bycatch. Climate change (i.e. global warming).

—

I was sick for years. Now it’s coming back.

Little serpent sipping there beyond the deck.

A. colubrus. The need for names (my friend

wants to help) is thirst for clarity, affinity.

Yet sometimes I watch the trees. Let the whip

maples weep and go blur above the barn.

Now they’re a wash of green, a mere wave.

Now they carry me, as he says, in their arms.

Viral-capsid antigen: 2410—

Hummingbird’s back again—green bulb blinking

its alarm.

Now the first heavy drops ...

Good night, little one—asleep with her toys—

Aggregate testing: lymphoma TB

“tumors?” HIV leukemia Grave’s—

Like photons, slowly, around a gray sun—

And when I blink and bring them back, in their

distinctions, the silver limbs like water—

“chronic running into walls” “chronic fog”—

Every second, trillions of neutrinos

passing through your arm, “like you’re transparent”—

CFS :: CF/IDS :: ME :: “no kidding?”—

Right. Sperm. Great blue. Minke (common; Antarctic).

Fin. Sei. Humpback. Bryde’s. Gray. Orca. Pygmy ...

Cicada husk hangs on through the hard rain —

When I pull out my old notes, my notebooks full of shaky words—

In the third stage, a whale fallen through the deepest oceanic zones—

bathyal, abyssal—may take a hundred years—more—to decompose—

When I find the old books, I see check marks, dog-ears, underlines—

Full restoration of health is still your hope and expectation, but—

giant isopods—squat lobsters—osedax—sea cucumber —bristle worms—

You know I am serious about the whales: [Views of Jeopardy]—

Born in 1925, in Pittsburgh, PA—with a metro population greater—

than the global population of whales, perhaps less than two million—

When you hear [ ] it’s already [ ] Shh. Close your eyes—

Languages are dying at a rate of one every two weeks—

pine pollen, gnats’ wings — glints in air — dust motes, mold spore—

this.fucked.flux.lux.crux // (broken piece of lamp garbage)—

Each eye the size of a grapefruit. Heart bigger than a smart car—

But what we see is infinitely less than what we don’t see. Up, up?—

Cottonwood seed—polymers, i.e. plastic “foam”: gas bubbles—

I can’t believe I’m getting it again, “you have always”—“such—

darkness”—measured by a billion bioluminescent wanderers—

Wherever you sit is the center of the universe—wherever—you—

Hear the warning it’s too late. Flatfish. Time for math again, kids—

polystyrene “for infant teething”—biosemiotics: every cell has—

a cognitive element. SnotBot: whale-breath DNA—in decay—

and lived for eighty-seven years—mostly alone—mostly islands—

In the third stage, a whale fallen through the deepest zones—

bathyal, abyssal, down through the coldest depths, may take that—

long to decompose, a hundred years, more — no light — no oxygen—

[What do you mean] [what do we do about it]—shh—

Think of this one, spinning, Eschrichtius robustus, gray, of the—

sole living genus, of baleen, of the family Eschrichtiidae, like a—

tissue, floating in the darkness, to settle there. It takes your life.

Notes:

In “Whale Fall” I have incorporated quotations, echoes, and data from other poets, biologists, and journalists: Edmund Blair Bolles, Margaret Wise Brown, Julia Fiedorczuk and Gerardo Beltrán, Jack Gilbert, Albert Goldbarth, Brooks Hays, Lynn Keller, Wajeeha Malik, Shaena Montanari, Rachel Nuwer, Stanley Plumly, Evelyn Reilly, Aaron Sidder, and Jesse A. Stoff and Charles R. Pellegrino. I also use information and language from Wikipedia.

Source: Poetry (May 2019)