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      October 16, 2019The Whale WatchersDerek Otsuji

      for Jordan, Aiyana, Alina, Aily and Kai

      We were ecotourists
      for the day, paid a hefty
      fee to watch the famed
      humpbacks at their brilliant
      synchronized display,
      an orchestration from
      beneath of the most amazing
       
      feeding show on Earth,
      a behavior which, as our
      guide, a marine biologist,
      explained, is not instinct
      but something learned—
      and more—passed on.
       
      From which free exchange
      of knowledge, from whale
      to whale, we must infer
      that there exists among
      these cetaceans, a culture—
      evolving as it archives
       
      a collective repository
      of shared knowledge they
      deploy against changes
      inflicted on their habitat
      by humans, in a kind of cross-
      species rebalancing act.
       
      The bay was green and flat
      as a stage, rimmed by
      a coast brushed up with brushy
      pines, the weather clear
      on all sides. When the first
      call out came—Two o’clock!—
      we turned in unison
      to look and caught sight
      of the enormous spectacle—
      a pod of giant mouths
      launching up—as from
      some invisible trap door,
       
      to gulp down hoards of
      herring expertly corralled—
      then sinking back as quick
      as they appeared, a squabble
      of seagulls scrambling for
      fish scraps in their wake.
       
      And on the upward surge,
      how inexplicably our
      emotions surged up, too,
      fed by exhalations,
      a veritable chorus
      of cries punctuated by
       
      interjections, then
      a smattering of applause,
      as for a firework’s finale’s
      final bow. A glittering lull.
      And then, as if to oblige,
      the grand sight repeated
       
      for a second and third show,
      each time in a different spot
      of the bay, our guide assuring us
      we were lucky to get
      an encore so magnanimous,
      which brightened the mood
       
      of all on deck (we’d gotten our
      money’s worth, no doubt!),
      amateur nature photographers
      proudly showing what images
      they’d captured on their
      spectacular iPhone displays.
       
      Everything was satisfactory,
      our young guide clearly
      pleased the whales had been
      amenable, his smile betraying
      a complicit hand, as it were,
      in the negotiated deal.
       
      Then in the clear air
      above us—we felt a shift,
      a change in atmosphere,
      stirred by an agitation
      among seagulls on the edge
      of alarm, the circling
       
      body in flight tightening,
      with mews and cries,
      as wings tensed like bows
      and down the gulls dove;
      and up from the green sea
      another flock drove up,
       
      breaking surface—little silver
      splinters leaping, wiggling
      flickering in panicked flight,
      driven up from the depths
      on a boiling cloud,
      and then, just port side,
       
      too close, Oh God, a surge—
      the mouths, cavernous
      and truly monstrous,
      like a clutch of mutant
      bivalves, blindly opening,
      clapping shut, as seagulls
       
      squawked and green water
      churned and foamed,
      a cauldron of feeding and
      frenzy so close it rocked
      the boat. Screams—half glee,
      half terror—in musical
       
      riot rose, one excitable
      woman pronouncing
      upon it all the names
      of our risen Lord,
      as a squall of seagulls
      descended, in a great cloud
       
      of feeders. And just as
      suddenly as they appeared,
      the whales were gone,
      the churning boiler went flat;
      a straggling gull got down
      his gullet the last fish.
       
      A giddy calm ensued,
      then conversations, in high-
      pitched, excited voices
      —what was seen, what it meant,
      chewed over with wonder
      and surmise, the motley
       
      crowd of us awakened, eyes
      —wilder yet subtler—seeing
      that what we’d taken to be
      mere spectacle, ingenious
      display of that capacity
      in face of shifting pressures, not for
       
      adaption, merely, but invention
      and redesign, such that
      the creature’s very nature
      is elevated to a new kind
      of mind, rebalancing
      the precarious equation
       
      by which we all, in this shared
      economy, either perish
      or thrive—was, in fact, encounter
      with culture the equal
      to our own, a communal
      music and movement
       
      created out of ritual as deep
      as any need to survive.
      It was all of a piece, to which
      a coda was now appended
      when out of the blue
      the first blowhole piped—
       
      then another and
      another, like a wheezy
      slow-motion calliope
      on an old riverboat
      toting passengers down
      and away, each plume of mist
       
      hovering with a vaguely
      valedictory air—
      like a sailing white
      kerchief. A single fluked tail
      flapped like a wing, then
      a hand, as the whole roving
       
      herd rolled on, down
      migratory roads, through
      peaceable blue worlds, where,
      suspended as in a dream,
      they roam and feed and sleep
      and sometimes sing.

      from #64 - Summer 2019

      Derek Otsuji

      “In 2015, I went with my family on an Alaskan whale watching tour, eager to catch sight of the humpback whales bubble net feeding in the bay. We were expecting a tourist experience: spectacular nature kept at a safe distance. What we got instead was an alarmingly close encounter, which I have attempted to describe in this poem. In Dickinson’s ‘Narrow Fellow in the Grass,’ the little boy in the poem speaks of his acquaintance with ‘Nature’s People’ as a ‘transport,’ an ecstatic moment when he is lifted out of the human world into a revivifying space shared with the animals. This transport places the boy in direct contact with the natural world, an experience terrifying and exhilarating at once. It is that kind of an encounter that I have tried to capture here.”