Butterflies and Whales As like us as unlike, no trick of light –

the swimmers sort seas with baleen: bound mouth-combs of keratin-hair;

the flyers, probe wild blooms with siphons: their proboscises paired and unwound –

all rise.

One kind in air. Another in brine.

One through kelp. Another out of kinnikinnick.

Breech or spyhop, puddle or hilltop,

all breathe and are flexible. All flex, breathe

and breed: live-borne or twice-borne.

Some scaled in silver; some silvered

with barnacles. Vast or erratic,

double star or constellation they arc

in their florescences and phosphorescences.

Throats bellow-pleated, some sound and sing.

Pheromones adrift: others dart silently frantic

then perch. Plankton, wild mustard, sperm

and krill: grays and humpbacks hang in the sun,

slide beneath pack ice making nets of their exhalations,

while upslope, insects – the blues, elfins, and marbles – bask:

all those of the planet, and the whales as well.

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