And once more:                      the whale.

I know what you're thinking,

            but it's different this time-

a new ocean                octopus blooming

in darkness,     what gaudy thatches

                        of leg               among the meadow

            of tubeworm                            & carcass-fall.

                        The Argonauts have found

a golden fleece,           a feast of lazy

bloat & rummage.                   Hercules

            drifts along the eelpout           blubber-

                        drunk and slung           in a vertebrae's dip.

& all the while,                       the whale's ribcage

            vibrates with Ocedax:                         boneworms

growing           roots to find     the sustenance

            in decay.          When the Argonauts stumble

                        to name the cadaver-                        rorqual maybe,

            or gray-I am on an Oregon beach

again, watching           her roughshod decimation,

the way men stammer             all quick trigger

            all thunderdumb                      at the way good ideas

leave a job half-finished.        You have

to understand              I'm different this time:

            I think of her heart      & the way the surface

flattens it to something toxic              Elephant's

Foot of chamber          of tube. Not because

            of this heart's              irradiated reckoning,

but because of the way half-lives make

            it easier to survey the damage.           I'm always

calculating tragedies   always tallying up

the ways the haunting                         has come home

to roost.           This careful accounting

this disastermath         all to say:         don't let

            my body be ripped      by fistful         if someone

can't tell the difference           between cruelty

            & the things we do to stay fed.           Let me

fall through the snow  untimely miracle        my heart

a surfeit for a curious nuzzle   of sharks         my fat

            a reprieve for predators           who want the chance

to rest.             Let my softness nourish the succession

until the boneworms'              roots    make a writhing

forest of my jaw.         A century on, when I am food

            & shelter in the gloom                        let me thank the ocean

for the courtesy of dying at sea.          You see, the difference

            between detonation                 & detritivore is a matter

            of tide  of unlucky rudder. & yet I keep counting,

hoping the arithmetic will save me.                That if I don't

            survive the night         there was dignity in the trying,

that I am beyond reach          

            of clumsy knuckle       and rage,

bacterial mats whispering

            that I am safe.                         I am home.