The Great Whale's Forgetting

by: Rachel Parker

| Published by Anomaly Poetry in their Winter 2024 anthology, Tidings |

Through cobalt depths she moves 

like a mountain dreaming, 

forty tons of ancient knowing 

parting the sea's dark silk.

Her flukes write scripture 

in swirling water, 

while deep in her bones 

lie star-maps of migration, 

routes her grandmothers sang.

She carries coordinates 

in the curves of her spine, 

in the slow pulse 

of primordial blood, 

while around her 

the cold sea churns, 

vast and frothy and forgetful.

And now she cannot recall 

there was ever anything to remember, 

drifting through waters that once held 

such secrets, such certainties. 

The sacred current flows beneath her

unrecognized, while her very DNA 

carries maps she can no longer read 

in a language she has forgotten.