Whale Song, Penny Harter

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With Whales

Whale Song
Penny Harter
for Scott McVay

Whalebones arc among white stones.
Bleached old guardians, the great ribs close
like igloos on each grave.

Driven into dirt the bones are still.
One thinks of Jonah and the bellied black,
the hard enfolding.

Sun bounces round the rib that rims the whole—
They move! They move again, a single ripple,
lean as a xylophone.

The souls of these whales long ago returned
to the cold seas, the gray sky—
and now this rhythm,
this dance in a white space?

~~~~~~~~~~~
Penny Harter was born in 1940. Her work appears in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Her most recent books are Lizard Light: Poems from the Earth and Buried in the Sky. She is a teaching artist for the Arts-in-Education program sponsored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts; for more information on her teaching, workshops, and writing, please visit http://penhart.home.att.net. This poem was previously published in her book Lizard Light: Poems from the Earth (Santa Fe, N.M.: Sherman Asher, © 1998) and is reprinted by permission of the author.