Poems by Connie Soper
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Spirit Animal
by Connie Soper
From Canary Spring 2024
Connie is fortunate to live in a city with many public parks and natural areas, not far from the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. She takes full advantage of the rich and diverse environment by walking and taking photographs in these special places.
When a whale dies at sea
it descends with quietude—in death,
feeding the life that once sustained it.
Today, another gray has washed ashore.
No whale fall, this—bloated carcass
buoyed by wind and currents, by the wake
of the ship that struck it.
We have come to witness this enormity,
gazing as if in the museum
of once-in-a-lifetime.
Scientists probe the corpse, exposing gash
and wound. They measure blowhole to tail,
teach us a whale’s heart can weigh half
a ton. That it sings to find
companions, swims the miracle of migration,
Arctic to Mexico.
How lucky we are, how small,
huddled around the barnacled
creature already in decay, bitten by sharks.
Skin loose and slack as a deflated parachute.
Its huge heart, withered within
a cathedral of bones, knock
knocking at the edge of the ocean, waiting
for king tides to reclaim it.
© Connie Soper