Beluga Whales

Whimsical and white in sapphire water,
Pixies elusive as thought itself,
With wry smiles and dark lustrous eyes,
In the rainbow polar sea, amid jumbled ice,
The whales come, pumping their flukes,
Exhaling mysterious arias.

Magenta saxifrages dig in,
And willow trees stunted on the stony shore;
Terns circle and call overhead,
Eiders string out in flocks across the water.
One day, blue fissures open, mile after mile,
The next, the ice jams into bays and locks tight.

A lone whale, from his blowhole,
Slowly grows a big globe of air into the water,
And conjures with this bright bauble, his toy,
Slurps it into his pursed mouth,
Then spews it out once more, praising his own artistry,
And shapes it into a twisting bracelet,
Shining and expanding, till it begins to break
Into flattened rising spheres.
What fun! What perfect fun!

Around Alaska, Canada and Greenland,
Around Scandinavia and Russia,
The belugas in myriads range,
Singing symphonically to each other,
Beaming clicks through the echoing deep,
Chorusing whistles, yelps, creaks and croaks,
Blares, rasps, squawks, and warbles,
Trills and chirps and blurts.

In July and August belugas crowd into estuaries
To moult and nurse their young,
Yellow-white ghosts against the jade water, jostling in swathes,
Pounding their tails to hover in the current,
Sending plumes of spray into the chill air,
They rub off their yellowish wrinkled old skins
Against the bottom,in floppy belts,
And gleam anew, cadmium-white and smooth.