Stranger on the Shore

 

Leviathan is here,

beneath the lulling water.

A crystal, liquid tear

breathes from the breaching rock.

 

Signs of life arise,

a mist, sighs the marine.

The lone shearwater cries,

the breath belies the spirit.

 

A sonic compass guiding

the pilot of the whales.

Echoes of land are hiding

amid the rasping shale.

 

From somewhere in the blue

a grotesqueness shudders through.

Fear into the blackfish,

a threat of sullen truth.

 

At length, into the shallows

where heaviness holds his head.

So old to know, too late to blow

the waters from above.

 

Ocean holds his lifeblood,

returned now to the sea.

The shoreline yields, cetacean floods,

an angry gust subsides.

 

Lament in song is heard

only by the soaring fulmar.

 

© Andrew Williams 1992

 

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