Beached Whale

"Sixty-six feet from snout to flukes,
the coastguard said.

As if that was all it was -
something reducible to
human proportion. A scale
more possible to comprehend:
the length of eleven men
laid end to end.

Dead.

Death as palpable as death can be -
a silent tonnage of it, tossed
aside as easily as empty shells.

Hard to fathom such a life
snuffed out - like a loved one's:
a life too large, too vital to be
spent.

Across the beach, baleen is
strewn like a broken comb,
its purpose done.

Now, no more than a side-show -
a freak to glut the curiosity of
things best left unknown.
A miracle - its secret undone -
exposed in its immense indignity.

The eye, though blind, accuses.
And I, aware of the intrusion,
pick my way back up the rocks
and off

thinking of my father, in his room,
waiting for the end.

(for my father)