Inside the Whale Museum

Húsavík, Iceland

by Stephanie Green

A cavernous space, glaucous light,
and I’m walking on the ocean floor
while shadowy cetaceans float above.
           
A moan reverberates through the museum,                    
white dashes shoot in bursts
across a black cymatic screen:

musical notes defined by the surrounding      
silence of the ocean; a song
which can be heard from Portugal to Iceland,

now drowned,  scrambled by engines
of container ships, tankers and ferries.
Here in the museum I follow the moan

to a film of you, a hunchback with your calf.                                                  
Ringed with wrinkles, the light in your eye
is the pure, clean flame of oil.

I climb up wooden stairs to a platform
level with a vast skeleton.  I never knew
that hidden inside each flipper are finger-joints.
                                                           
I remember we are cousins,
as now outstretched towards me
you hold out your hand.