Baleen

by Elizabeth Gibson

We have been moving since we came into wet,
dark being, we would die if we were still.
Vast as an asteroid, we make noises to communicate
that they call song, but it is simply functional.
The young must learn to obey, carry our echoes first,
a base of bone and meat, before the barnacles
and salt of land stick to their skins.

All sandy, the young flop back, try to bounce
words off us. We turn away, wait until they revert
to rumbling again. They scoff, call us old and broken.
Some years, they’ll tell us of a slip, a rumble
fragment, a starfish stretching arms into their speech.
They marvel that they went lifespans not knowing
it is not universal to say this or that, and how?

They say they spin a story for their friends, of us.
If only I could be there, hear how they paint
and weave, shape our language into their language,
 if I could feel my planet of brain expand for it.
Our origin story in our tongue, and yet in theirs.
How do you find the words? We are suspended,
ancient, flowing like a twin galaxy against your edges.