Whale Fall

The whale rests, heaving toward silence now,  

its great body stitched by death’s needle.  

The water drags its secrets, cold arms,  

to fold the belly, the barnacled breath.  

Sharks carve into the deep feast, lightless,  

their teeth precise as a surgeon’s blade.  

Flesh gives tremors, a hymn of surrender,  

as crabs march into the opened chambers.  

In the hollowed vault, where bones gleam,  

microbes curl, tiny blooms fed by decay.  

The ribs become a cathedral, a home  

for worms swaying in underwater wind.  

Life heeds the call of collapse, migration–  

a strange abundance climbs out of ruin,  

each mouth finding its part in the body,  

each part a gift from the enormity of hunger.