An Event Otherwise Known

Some things must not be known, not likened
—tales muddle in clocks, in time. Report:
Baleen Swims into Mouth of Fraser
Watchers point, Look! Look!

While the whale devours krill, radio waves
form and reform in the ear. Before the story
finishes it slips into a text, grows
great, grows small. Ten minutes, the hours
pass—or fifty years—an indent or paraphrase.
Details blur. Fresh water fungi or lichens
attack the baleen’s skin and, after three weeks,

it beaches.

That is the fantastical, the hook the hearer dreams
of, the mysterious whys. Tugboats in lines give
chase to drive the grey from the channel.
But it comes upriver with wisdom, a purpose.

At least we wish it to be true—for we must
make Mysticeti familial tales, myths of centric
matter. There! There! It swims
upon this page, beaches
in a margin. Now we know the reason
it flings fin and tail, submerges in the white.