Whale Song

by Les

And she wondered at this tendency
to be swallowed by it

like flowing into the open mouth
of a whale and falling asleep

on the bed of its tongue. Memory
is the circumference of a song

radiating from the center
of dying, being born, squalling.

She had chosen none of this,
as no human could influence

the eclipse, the ambit of dawn
or the penumbra of a shadow.

A feeling follows from a premise
and the malady is conclusive

as seawater bursting from its nostrils:
Sometimes one wakes up, in love.