THAT

Marine Mammals of the Northwestern
Coast of North America, 1874
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
The whaling captain Charles Scammon left
the ragged, rocky cliffs of Maine’s coast for
San Francisco in 1849 where he led many whaling expeditions.
But what those large bodies gave instead of flesh and oil
was a path to a luminous blue, Baja Lagoon
where the whales stilled their bodies to give birth.
The first day he arrived at the open-mouthed bay
his heart shifted into a locked wooden chest
left rib open and bare. He learned to observe
for different purpose: not to hunt, but to know
what the dark bodies could spell into him.
When he left that unpredictable sea to write
it all down he settled with his son on the edge
of the Laguna where the sea still spoke in susurrations of fog.
8 THAT