Driftwood leviathan,

how ironic

that you raise burl tail in salute -

fluked rebuke, perhaps

to all those centuries of whale misery

when you were flensed

and all deemed irredeemable,

cast adrift.

...

Dreamtime Spirit,

great sorrowing soul,

rainbow portals you have grown,

cathedrals to the past

were I to place my all-seeing near -

what would I hear?

Songs of krill and calving, of ceaseless wine-dark-deep

or endless keening?

~

Note:

To the Australian Aboriginals, whose traditional homelands encompass the coastal regions of the Australian continent, the powerful and boisterous whale is a beloved ancestor, shaper of the landscape, and immortal being of that timeless, instructive and never-ending epoch of creation and earthly transformation widely known as the Dreamtime or Dreaming. To the coastal tribes the whale is the all-powerful Rainbow Serpent and is closely associated with the Rainbow Serpent/Snake of the inland. The whale is, as is the serpent elsewhere in the world, associated with fire, earth energy, wind, water, the sun, moon and the symbol that links all of these elements - the rainbow.