How they are comparable to

the biggest dinosaurs that once lived

on this turquoise globe; titanosaurs

and argentinosauruses, ranging

from tens to more than one hundred feet

in length. How they swim using

their tailing flukes and pectoral fins below

the surface of a jagged edge, only

making a grand entrance, twisting

their obese bodies and flashing their tails

feet-high in the air. How the blue whale,

the Sinatra of the ocean, whose

crooning songs, glide through air & salt,

marking an elaborate mating ritual;

how they roll and rocket up to air,

while spearing out gametes.
How the birth of a baby whale, is no fluke.

It is marked by a journey of thousands

of miles, to warmer equatorial waters,

and a return to the habitual hunting ground

of shoals of krill, flapped to the mouth

by the two prong fluke. How the story of

a blue whale mother giving birth

to her calf, captures our imagination

and attention; a tale of a birth canal

and the freedom of realizing,

that the sappy soap of child birth, has all the elements

of a Nicholas Sparks novel; twists, turns,

mush and a sentimentality that

makes grown women cry, seeing

a baby whale being born. 
How a mother whale shelters

her calf, as she lets him be carried

on beneath her blubber belly, sometimes,

pushed to the front of by her snout,

knowing that the difference between

soppy and sloppy, is survival.

How they roam the seas together, singing

the songs that make sailors at sea,

think of their wives at home, tormented by

sightings of fluking, distracted in

mind, to entertain mermaids.
A juvenile whale calf, who by instinct,

leaps high, spins and turns the torso,

lifting his fluke, only to dive below,

like a spinning ballerina, after an airy jump,

which amasses the whale faithful, to

watch from the nearby hull of a lookout boat.

How the first breath is always special,

to a bantam weight milksop,

still sopping on his mother’s milk,

knowing that his calcified milky-white spears,

were lost to evolution, well before

the ontogeny of baleen; sheets of armor,

draped down from the upper jaw,

made of long tapering tassels,

frills harvesting krill.
How a blue beast is more of a beauty,

like a doming turquoise mosque high above

the Istanbul skyline, as we, the ones,

inspired or mad enough to chase whales,

are gifted with a truth, that befalls us,

like an earth-bound flared asteroid,

kindling something deep from within us.

The math of calculating the sheer numbers

of miniature shrimp that must perish

to build a monument of flesh,

padded with body fat. How the fasting diets,

deplete whale blubber, one chain at a time,

as they migrate from frigid polar waters,

to latitudes of the equator,

to beautify a blue heifer,

transforming her,

into a cow.