Every Particle Attracts Another

Dear (if I may) young Sperm Whale

I recently received a letter beginning with
‘Dear’. Four letters transforming a letter,
travelling beyond a formal beginning to years

of unknown fondness.

Dear young sperm whale
Dear juvenile physter macrocephalus

Tēnā koe parāoa

I have no throwback to atolls or archipelagos, no relatives on early outrigger canoes exploring the Pacific, discovering great beasts splitting platforms of transit without warning, a rise of monstrous proportions for which there was no earthly explanation, their sinking return to darkness a message from ocean’s god.

Not a smidgen of belonging to sacred whale traditions or obsessive pursuit for more more and most. Sweet-scented spermaceti retrieved from head slash, blubber boiled for oil, flesh flensed, teeth uprooted, ambergris grasped. Nothing to do with my DNA. No missionary relatives hellbent on whaler conversion to fire and brimstone, no back tracking to Weller men or any other subsidiary interests in whaling.

You and I
have no history.
No hidden mystery.

Our beginning is recent.
Decades, not centuries.

Animal attic in the museum. After my circuit I waited
at the bones of a whale, hoisted in air.
No particular whale with tail dents or side scars.

In books at school, identical sealers and whalers were inked
in black. Their difference was found in task, men who slit seals
or men who threw spears at whales. Giant cooking pots bubbled.

I met sperm whales on tv cartoons and nature programmes.
Later came news items, movies, documentaries. Books. Articles.

the sperm whale with its battering ram head was the only whale to attack and sink damaged ships      have the largest brain of all living organisms in the history of evolution      sleep vertically in columns of great stone monoliths        explosive harpoons fire from research vessels      whale meat stockpiled      disposed of      sperm whales possess spindle neurons commonly linked to empathy

Dear (if I may) young Sperm Whale

lifted from ocean’s trench, dead on arrival,
no visual trauma, what happened to you?
Were you with your mother, separated
through click confusion. Echolocation disturbed
by naval sonars, hydrocarbon exploration,
offshore construction, ship propellors
Lost in acoustic disorientation capsizing
in shallow water body mass pressure
too great for survival buoyant spermaceti
floating you here to shore.

Jaw chain-sawed and stolen
before any blessing.

Ribbons of fat trail from your partial
flipper, eye hangs out of orbit,
internal fluids are draining
your body is shrinking.

Dear Sperm Whale

I am sorry

We are all full of hidden mystery.
Old history.