What the whale dreams
He stumbles on limbs
no longer capable of bearing his weight,
goes deeper to where fish are more plentiful.
There was a balance here, a choice,
such that having been made, was irrevocable.
Still, in his dreams, he remembers:
mountain glades, odors with which forests abounded,
the first dive, and the necessity
to hold his breath for increasing periods.
Now he re-experiences the darkness of the bottom,
The realization that in largeness
lies a double edged sword:
freedom from the belligerence
with which the deep redounds,
the very pressure of which
might once have made him implode,
the unremitting mind-diminishing obligation to spend
so much of his existence
searching for food,
the sheer pleasure, the exhilaration,
as he rises from one world to another,
and awakens
in the full glaring sparkle
of the sunlight.