The World, A Whale

Aubrey Lynch

There is a great cosmic blue-black

whale with

trees larger than skyscrapers

sprouting from its back.

Crystals grow like barnacles

on the whale’s skin, the fertile ground

of the world it carries.

Where chunks

have been torn

from its body,

water, once ice, has gathered

to create lakes

and oceans.

When one stares

at an ocean

does it not stare back at you?

How many oceans

are untraveled

if an ocean is only but a scar

on a

whale,

cosmos,

heart,

mind?

The whale

draws closer

still.

Swimming through space,

it holds steadily

towards Earth.

As we worry it is

an eater of worlds,

that it’ll swallow us whole, perhaps it is time

to acknowledge our own whales.

On our whales, there may

be barren deserts

or thriving rainforests.

Our whales are

devoid of any color

known

to man.

Crystalline wisdom

gross from

it’s foundational skin.

Where they

were once whole, our whales

have oceans

where part of them

was taken,

or perhaps decayed.

Our worlds

are

incomplete.

Aubrey Lynch is a junior writing and environmental conservation major at Cedar Crest College. She is from Levittown, Pennsylvania.