Once
Upon a time, each whale was
back-legg-ed, puppy shaped and squirmy,
a hip-having land-clinger, sniffing at salt. Licking at
salt like Eve kissed that apple, and told it:
apple, I would change myself completely, for you.
And once each whale slipped be   -neath layers of sea-floor-silt,
shuffled out of their legs, took     beach to them like sandpaper.
When a medieval child is           born with a vestigial tail,
the priest is called to cut it.            For whales it is the hips:
the ever-undulating secret bones this       monster keeps for making love.
Today the epaulette shark toddles the reef,    and teaches the urchins to cartwheel.