Orcas, Resurrection Bay, Alaska
Orcinus, meaning of the kingdom of the dead
by Jeanna Wagner
We shout each time we spot the sharp sail of a dorsal
fin rising from the bay.
The surprise of it, that black isosceles slicing
through water
like scissors through the underside of a cloth before
it sutures itself
whole again. We wait for the orcas to ascend from
their underworld
while we learn the bones of their pectoral fins are
five-fingered like hands,
that once orcas walked on solid ground. Now they
balance two worlds
while they sleep, the dreaming eye shut, the navigating
eye open, the spirit
stitching an arc between the two halves of everything
that lives. The myths say
the whale dies and turns human, the hunter lives
forever as his prey.
Loss always the underside of belief. And here we
are now, a boatful
of old travelers waiting to witness the gods
of another place.
Like midwives, we hover near the spot where they
will emerge,
their bodies side-by-side, moving half in, half out of
the gray-blue water
where they bask for a few moments in the brimming
light before they disappear.