for a reading of the poem click here
Riding my bike to school I see a whale.
It surfaces quietly, sleek and black
in the oily water, broad back glistening.
I am standing on a metal gangplank.
In the distance the spires of the city.
I am waiting for the lock to fill and the boat
to rise before I continue on my way,
to my seminars and my books and all I am
trying to do. But now something sleek
and black has broken the surface—
a Pilot Whale, caught, big as a pickup—
curving and diving, curving and diving,
until the lock finally lowers and it can
swim away, back out to sea.