THE LAST SONG

 

 

Dim are the depths and deep are the dives

As he glides on his solitary way

Through forests of fronze and rainbowed reefs

Round rocks where the guillemots play

 

 

Past silvering sands and palm dappled beach

And out to the oceans embrace

He follows the path that his ancestors took

The last of his line and his race.

 

 

Is ancestral memory absorbed from the past

Of whalers who slaughtered his kin?

With harpoons that ripped, spilling guts, letting blood

For a gland, or a tooth, or a fin?

 

 

Does he see as he cruises the vast lonely waste

The sun bleached bones of his kind?

The carcasses rotted and scavenger stripped

The fate of his race sealed and signed?

 

 

You may hear him sometimes as he journeys alone

And sings to the set of the sun

For the saddest of sounds is the song of the whale

As he calls to his brothers long gone.