Orca

Photo by Karoline Cullen - Orca Network

She is grieving.

The loss of her child

is something no mother

should have to bear.

The water is dark and surging.

It takes strength to push through

the waves,

to believe in a horizon unseen.

She gives a keening whine,

then blows, then dives,

her fluke arching

black against the sky.

Slowly, she makes

her lonely way

back to her pod,

her calf no longer

beside her.

I am reading a wonderful book about a young woman who spent twenty years watching the whales in Prince William Sound, both before and after the oil spill. The pods she followed are now vanishing. So much grief in this world. The book is Into Great Silence by Eva Saulitis.