Orca

ORCA

He erupts from the water
in a triumphant roll, slicing
moist air with his black fins and tail,
disappearing once more in 
an explosion of diamonds as salt spray
and sun
He arrives every year when this warm
bay is pregnant, giving birth to new stories
of survival and death
The epitome of orca, his warm-blood
intelligence maneuvers like a spirit
through the muscular restlessness of
heaving gray seas that are the waters of 
his days, where he’s powerful and elusive
gliding through the ocean like the shadow
of a presence in the absence of light
where he’s fluid and flexible, always
solid and smooth, as if the structure of 
stone might be hydrodynamic, somehow
shaping and shaped by the contours of
water curving over his body, carrying the 
chatter of echolocation and revealing his 
dorsal as a signature in black, that
gray whale and great shark, and all else
who might dare, know the orcas are
back, that the family of the
owner is in residence
once more


Emanuel Carter

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