How The Beluga Spoons

For a whispered secret or to steal a kiss, I lean out
over her tank, like a longship’s figurehead,
far as a man in love dare reach
without altogether letting go. My fingers grip the rail
behind me, arms contorted to flippers. Rippling
in this aquamarine mirror, a human face
becomes the face of a whale
nosing cautiously through
the surface, that crystalline plane
between two worlds. I smile, her lips opening
into her eye-to-eye cavern. I throw a kiss, toss it
gently with a nod. She dips her lower jaw,
scoops it full as a waterwheel bucket,
and with a gesture, rightly larger,
wetter, more deliberate than mine,
approves our courtship. She chortles
my comic response, my straightman nonchalance,
ladles another mandible full, and showers me
again with kisses. By this passage, we vow
to the cosmos a romance revived
from eons of dormancy. We feel our way,
sonar and sight, slowly
into the gray swales—lovers
sounding our one laughter
wave after wave, quasar to quasar,
toward that first rollicking spark and whatever
leviathan god brought it on.

Collisions of Reckless Love CDs are available from the Western Folklife Center (phone 775-738-7508, ext 2) and CD Baby.

© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.