Cetacean strandings are among the most heart-wrenching events we can ever witness. As dehydration kicks in, many will die. For some, particularly large cetaceans, without the water to support their weight, their bodies can collapse. If the tide rises to reach them, they may drown if their blowholes become covered with water. Some species, like pilot whales, seem more susceptible to stranding than others. Some places, like New Zealand’s Farewell Spit, seem to be stranding hotspots. Today, join award-winning poet Kamilah Aisha Moon as she takes us to one of these tragic events on Farewell Spit during a mass stranding of pilot whales.
I.
Huge dashes in the sand, two or three
times a year they swim like words
in a sentence toward the period
of the beach, lured into sunning
themselves like humans do—
forgetting gravity,
smothered in the absence
of waves and high tides.
II.
[Pilot whales beach themselves] when their sonar
becomes scrambled in shallow water
or when a sick member of the pod
heads for shore and others follow
III.
61 of them on top of the South Island
wade into Farewell Spit.
18 needed help with their demises
this time, the sharp mercy
of knives still the slow motion heft
of each ocean heart.
IV.
Yes—even those born pilots,
those who have grown large and graceful
lose their way, found on their sides
season after season.
Is it more natural to care
or not to care?
Terrifying to be reminded a fluke
can fling anything or anyone
out of this world.
V.
Oh, the endings we swim toward
without thinking!
Mysteries of mass wrong turns, sick leaders
and sirens forever sexy
land or sea.
The unequaled rush
and horror of forgetting
ourselves
Notes on a Mass Stranding has been reproduced here with permission from Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database.