#poetsofBlueky
LightNews LightNews
helenlaycock.bsky.social
This poem was inspired by the true story of Tahlequah, an Orca mother, who carried her dead baby for 17 days, for thousands of miles... evidence that animals do experience #grief.

Shared today for #twentyforecopoetry
Published in 'ELEMENTAL'.

#poetry #Orca

#Blueskypoets #poetsofBlueky #SkyPoets
AN OCEAN OF ORCA TEARS by Helen Laycock Tahlequah corkscrews, throwing her belly to the light, showing the sky her feat through the wobble of water; she has made flesh and fin in the time the earth has rolled around the sun. Like water from a whip, she spins out the little life – Tali – tail first, a dark fizz of celebration exploding like her silent joy. Parallel shadows, they are carbon copies, paper and ink, swimming with magnetic hearts, noses softly drilling the beginning of miles. Thirty sleek minutes of nourishment, mimic, brushing, no rush, eye to eye, knowing love before the stopped breath. The tsunami of grief. Death. The calf is limp, bent over her mother’s beak like a wilted stalk, brined, dying, tail a broken arrowhead skimming the waves. Tahlequah adorns herself with a Tali headdress, hour upon hour, straining to keep it afloat, as though it is made of flowers the water will brown. For a thousand miles, death squats on her face, replaces the horizon, the rise and fall of seventeen suns, the spill of the milky moon, night after night after night. The carcass rots as she carries it aloft, bearing it like a saved gift. She dives when it slides and sinks, scoops the corpse like a haul of silver, lifts it to the sun, maybe in prayer, maybe to warm its blood. She follows the pod, eyes pleading as though a healer will emerge, and they tip the body from whale to whale, feeling the grief, sharing the load, until she sheds the load. She does not turn as it slips away, submerges in her wake. Waves swill the blemish of death from her skin; it braids the tide of a far land, but she bears the cliff fall of its weight. Feels the density of emptiness, pressing, pressing, though she is now wholly indiscernible from the rest. From 'ELEMENTAL'
November 20, 2024 at 11:26 AM