“Whale Hunt” by Robert Colman
from the 2018 Poem in Your Pocket Day booklet

“If this breaks you die.”
– A machine shop owner, cradling an airplane part in his hands. 

 

We ask you to pull us further
from land, the harpoon 
snug in your side, the seal bladder 
ballast above you.

We ask 
after we leap from our boats 
and pierce your flesh
that you carry our skiffs
as far as your might allows.  

 Let me roll my bone dice, 
clack the dominoes back in place. 
There is not one leviathan we do not love
unto death. Who drew whom 
into the deeps? Wasn’t everything 
necessity?   

I carved a compass face 
on this scrimshaw box 
because direction was all I could think, 
wind and current 
and your back as it breached. 

If they say I must now put away my blade
I would still follow you, all the ropes 
you once towed us with stretching unseen 
from bulwark and mast, cliff side 
and the gaff sail of earth pounded 
solid, this doorway.  

 

Originally from Factory (Frog Hollow Press, 2015)