The Shape of Hope

In seasons when the whales migrate, 
witnesses assemble on the east coast
at Point Lookout and Cape Byron.

Unconsciously resembling the chorus
in an Attic play, evocative of ritual
unfolding in heroic scenes, the new-age
watchers celebrate another ancient odyssey
of oceanic argonauts and amazons,
piloting north to birth their young
in blood-warm, amniotic seas,
homing south in a race against hunger,
back to the krill and unnatural danger.

Priming the crowd for epic moments, 
dolphins vault like acrobats, then dive offstage
as if they sense the drama looming into view:
the sleek dark mass, torpedo-true,
the awesome grace of tail-flukes raised
to strike the surface and plunge on across the bay.

Sometimes, farther north, when the leviathans
are wintering, on moonlit nights the humpback males
serenade the females, melancholy troubadours whose sighs
and plaints perpetuate the yearnings of a race.

The watchers sense their urgency, time running out,
uncertainty, and understand the whales' return
is somehow crucial to their own, and that these creatures
in their peril represent the shape of hope.