sucked back to its lair, leaves a vague bluff

smearing the horizon, but the afternoon

is stretched across a lazurite ocean

backgrounded by an almost sheer fall

of sky. Under the sun’s spotlight, a naked

surface shudders to the cliffs which recede

like a copper banner to margin the Barrens

from the sea. Where you stand, landfall stretches massive paws to hug a belly of water

that shallows turquoise, aqua, scarved with white.

In the cove’s hold, a swirl of insect-like birds,

confetti of gannet and kittiwake;

birdsound brandishes, a ratcheting jabber

of thousands, but, below it, seeding

in your ear, soft pulpy deflations,

the mildest explosions; and your gaze floats out

beyond the bay, to a vista of sundewed

cerulean where cedars of mist grow

out of gauze. They make sense. You recognize

the plumes of their foliage. You are watching

a forest of whalebreath migrating a blue

savannah. Minkes and fin. A great fleet passing.

And you know they are sifting the capelin,

that the silvery harvest is here, spawn

of the Gulf, milt of the current of Labrador.

And look, not all of the whales are sailing by:

some have swung into this harbour, are sliding

on and in, their dark dorsal curves flashing,

their pale patches on belly and fluke

shimmering chlorine-green through the water.

In the pool of the cove, they hang like zeppelins,

great bumble bees glutting the sea’s pollen.

Now the chorus of exhalations is like

the whip of metal sheets flapping, a hum

electronically pitched. A single one

is a shed door slamming, gush of thermal breath

from mesenteric depths. The eruptions

make ethereal monuments in a foreign

familiar sphere, this layer they have left

but will not part from. In and through, birds

flutter like bunting, their shrieking dampened.

Satellite to the display, you watch a marine

Serengeti: the capelin, unseen, but thrashing

like grass; the great herds of beasts underwater;

and, floating on the tide’s sloop, blackfly-swarms

of murres and guillemots while, from the heights,

squadrons of gannets strafe to the deep.

Such diverse populations. Such bewildering

numbers. You are utterly irrelevant.

You collapse on the turf to breathe.