I knew what they were looking at. I saw her earlier this morning, gliding under the rolling waves at dawn while fast shadows of her otherworldly self rose through the glistening surface. It’s unbearable to think. She was immense, and so is she now, not a crowd of forty people can obscure her from my view on the bank, that’s why I continued upwards towards the cliff edge with my hot tea steaming dragon shaped clouds into the autumn stillness.

 

I walked on, imagining her form drift through the empty space beneath the sailboat, the ripples of her throat pleats, her smooth lined mouth as she hunts for something to nourish her diminishing existence. I tried not to think of her pain, that heavy sensation she carried with her as she hugged the coastline a little too tightly. We all wanted to know her, but wished she hadn’t come calling.

 

I knew it was her the minute they went running, I couldn’t turn around, the heights of the cliff were my escape and I turned my back to her, again. She wouldn’t have known who I was either, or that her pain reflected my own, or that the struggle is collective, that we all need someone, or something. The water knew her though, how many times had it caressed her endless scars? Through which sea caves had her solemn body once passed through, searching for life, for nutrition, for meaning? Notoriously mysterious, a precise condition of the deep unknown, I wonder if she tried to call her family, if the sonar drowned out her desperate song. Or was it her muscles laden with heavy metals which finally gave way? I couldn’t have helped her, could I? How can a creature so majestic ask something so insignificant to the ocean as a floating man for anything but sympathy? Of course we couldn’t help her, but we couldn’t help but know the responsibility lies with us. Advanced in consciousness, aren’t we? But when the ocean’s mother comes crying, we bow to our knees. Nature prevails, our intellect a nuisance in the face of her suffering, and she knew it was her time. But still she pressed on, searching for the promise of riches. The American Dream of the inward shoreline, her sweeping tongue ready to fill her empty belly with the minerals she needed to grace us one more day with her presence. And now she displays her vulnerable grace across the shore, her mystery uncovered like we always wanted, but not like this.

 

I turned around, a fleeting glance obscured by the curve of the coastal path. Maybe it’s better to remember her as she was, not the carcass on the sand, the story in the papers, another dead whale washed up on the beach, another forewarning of human’s ignorance, of society’s relentless ruin.