In this week’s poem, Sally Bliumis-Dunn brings us close to endangered right whales through photographic glimpses. I love this poem’s vital and visceral imagery and its deep empathy for these beings’ lives.

Bliumis-Dunn is an associate editor at large and features writer for online poetry magazine Plume. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, New Ohio Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day and elsewhere. Her book “Echolocation” was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and Julie Suk Award.

Right Whales
By Sally Bliumis-Dunn

In the underwater photo,

because they have no dorsal fins,

they look like long, narrow stone slabs

floating at varying depths,

stepping stones or ancient stairs

down through water to the plain of sand

where bones of other whales lie buried—

this is what we’d hoped for you

not like the unlucky whales lost in krill-pink clouds

where lines from buoys to lobster traps become bars on a cage.

I saw a photo of one, a rope had caught its baleen comb

jigsawed through to the jaw, torn the creature’s fluke;

they said it took weeks

for the whale to die deep below the surface—

that the nearby fishermen hosing down their boats,

could have no idea.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Right Whales,” copyright 2019 by Sally Bliumis-Dunn, was originally publishsed in Plume Poetry 7. It appears by permission of the author.