Opening act: a raft of sea lions
gorge on stunned anchovies
too profuse for predators’ pouches.
Glistening steel breaks the surface,
hunch-backed submarine bulls
whose radar locates our purring motor
one hundred miles away.
Big boy shoots up, flips his head back
flaps his jaw to bite the sky,
spraying trails of wet stars that
circle his elephantine head,
bubbling with knotty knobs like the Buddha’s.
Humpbacks breach and glide
dive again in grace,
mark the water with a placid circle,
as they flash the underside of flayed fins,
to sign off in a swirl and slap.
Dolphins ripple by the humpback,
following their bottle noses,
zigging toward us, fearless and playful
zagging under our bow for the free ride
we want to take with them.
Whale and dolphin dances accompanied
by a symphony of sea birds:
screeching gulls in ravenous dives,
searing shearwaters shaving waves,
common murre fathers teaching their chicks to feast,
squawking and waddling over water like miniature penguins,
adding to the cacophonous chorus in praise of whale spill.
-Ruth Mota
Ruth Mota lives in a redwood forest the Santa Cruz Mountains of California with her Brazilian husband of many decades. She enjoys facilitating poetry circles to groups in the community like veterans and men in jail and attending workshops by local poet Ellen Bass. Her poems have been published in many online and print journals including Terrapin Books, Passager Books, High Shelf Press, Black Mountain Press and Tiny Seed Literary Journal.