Whalebone

The west’s prevailing onshore winds have finally fleshed
your ribs with the coarseness of limestone, granite and
quartz, a curling cavern scrimshawed only by travelling
sands that take your stories to the ears of migrating dunes.

Huge jaws agape without the fringe of baleen, I feel
denied a tactile curiosity; sifter, comber of ancient world
populations; what journeys have filtered through your years?
‘Greyhound of the Sea’, with arm’s-length vertebrae, the

bleached hinges of a leathery curved moment in wetted
sunshine, their whiteness remains here, silently, in a
broken row of stops that muted the bellows of your singing,
many tides ago. I step into the vacancy of your belly, Fin,

imprisoned by the absence of blubber and decadence,
a Jonah who longs to learn the old way of breathing…
but I lost any real ties to you when I crawled out of your
watery Kingdom in the last few minutes before midnight.