Tag: migration

On Sanctuary

With June Jordan.

When the visionary told you, Man is not a tree, you took note. The punchline had to do with the whole country up and moving every few years. Out of one town, into another––given the means, which were a significant factor. You considered reasons. Why the impulse to cut and run; to fly, stop, land?

Meanwhile, you could not––would not, stop thinking of the child who couldn’t flee, who didn’t make it. You refused coexistence with the mental calculations that allowed the peace of some to be secured by the occupation of others.

It is a fundamental need, you said, basic as shelter, food. For sanctuary, you said. Because man is not a tree.

***

Adapted from June Jordan’s 1989 essay, “Finding the Way Home.”

Descent

Moonlight on the water.

What is it, to come down from the highlands of his mother’s lullabies where the first blessings held him by the light of a single candle in the bedroom, where the sun was his father, the moon his mother, and for little sisters, he had the stars––to the sea that fed him, clothed him, to live in communion with the gulls peering into its vast and unfamiliar depths, to hold a single hope by the light of the shore? Teach me, he whispers, learning time by the tides.

***

Inspired by lingering images from Lorry Salcedo Mitrani’s short film, “Guzman and the Sea.”

Passages

Moving through doors.

What descends through the center of radiance into light so completely that it empties into a well so remote that none in its fabric can emerge, revealing nothing except in absence, as if to humble fledgling presumptions of sight? Shell of unknowing, invisible creatures of the deep, each disappearing body of snow, fold this becoming cortex of time, our next collective memory, already an echo.

Whale Songs

Some arctic baleens can live for over two-hundred years. What do they remember from their centuries of knowing?

My first memory of the largest creature known to ever exist on the planet, is of the ninety-four-foot blue whale model suspended from the ceiling in New York’s Museum of Natural history. It was amazing to me that something could grow so large from eating such tiny creatures.  I was relieved to know that it wanted nothing larger. 

Their songs are complex and can be heard for miles.

Some arctic baleens can live for over two-hundred years. And what do they remember, I wonder, from their centuries of knowing?

Killer whales, more porpoise than whale, live in family groups centered around the mother. The beluga earned the name canary of the sea, for its complex repertoire of chirps, whistles, and clicks.

The round trip of a grey whale is ten thousand miles. 

Some beaked species have been known to dive nearly two miles beneath the surface, have been known not to surface for two hours.

The round trip of a grey whale is ten thousand miles. You can tell their age by the accumulation patterns of ear wax. Alternating rings of light and dark record the number of migrations. This because the color of the wax changes with water temperature.

The humpback may live off fat reserves for over half a year.

It is suspected that they grieve. This because mothers and related kin have been known to carry the body of a dead calf for some time after death, even when doing so threatens their safety. 

The thing about whales is that no matter how hard you try to track them they tend to disappear for stretches of time only to reappear where the researchers don’t expect. The calves whisper to the mothers while migrating, and during these travels the mother will not eat. Instead, she will wait as her baby feeds, conserving her energy for the trip. 

They don’t know why the calves whisper, but it must be learned.

Their ancestors had four legs, and whenever I learn this about a sea creature, I can’t help but wonder about what was happening on land, to drive whole species away from it. And I think about certain things, and wonder: at what point do you –––?

Notes:

Here’s a photo and information about the blue whale model in the American Museum of Natural History.

The last passage about migration is excerpted from my story “Twilight at Blue Plate” which appeared in Oyster River Pages in August 2019.