Your whale tethered to a pier is

symbol of the difference between

our generations, this process of

being that fosters experience,

this treacle dimension in which

the unknown discovers itself.
It's gotten thinner this syrup,

since you ran for your brother

showing the discovery, the dead

docked mammal knocking its skull

on the pylons. You didn't mention

it but I could imagine the shrieking
of children, the squeak of swings,

the fact that you could back then

still see lobsters in the rock ponds,

an octopus in the shadows of the jetty.
Where are we going now my friend?

All of us I mean, billions on a

pebble soaring through a void,

circling one another as gulls

around a jellyfish on the sand;

why do you now cower in the shadow
of the other, under the tongue of

the mirror self, soft as the incest

of wings, the summer when you first

loved? I remember as though yesterday

pouring Listerine‚™ on my sister's

skinned knees and the way they
continued to bleed through her

stockings at church. She screamed so

the neighbour looked over our fence,

yet the world turns on, none-the-less.