Patron Saints

After the whales depart, I thank Carl for their

Astonishment.

For telling about it.

All of us out on the deck, huddled over tamarind tanged mole, limey guac and lemon meringue pie.

Deep in the throes of our nerdy wonder.

Our threads of kinship.

Carl – gingerly unspooling their comic dreams to tell the stories of life. Quietly blooming in the scholarship of witness, the gentle embrace

Of another practiced primate –

Having the kind of moment that we all of a certain age, know.

But for Carl, the whales arrive.

ORCA! They call out.

The flashing black fin refracts light all the way up to us two-leggeds with our pie and our cheese enchiladas

Melting inside the gastric bodies of water we all share.

The light hits Carl and their new friend, bouncing from them to us, and as one

Our many two legs rush us to the edge of the deck, like the side of a boat, peering and craning and cooing.

Tipping us straight into wonder.

Hellbent to catch that sharp black flash.

Later, when I thank them, I say, The whales had something for you.

Carl gets quiet, tears well above their cheeks and they sigh, nodding. I know.

I say, Hold onto it.

And suddenly, I am the selkie on the rock thirty years ago, the great bull orca swimming so close I catch the salmon on his breath.

I couldn’t hold on.

The same nets that caught his cousin, entrapping her in a tiny tank in Miami for fifty-some-odd years, also caught me.

We couldn’t hold on.

Carl says, They’re the patron saints of this place, aren’t they.

Yes, I say. Yes.

They are.

© Rachel Clark