Basking Shark Returns

(Cetorhinus Maximus)

This basking shark

Returns the way a dream comes back

& haunts my mind.

The very sight of him, his dorsal fin

Slicing through the waters,

Occasionally his conical pointed snout

& lunate caudal fin

Rearing up out of the nowhere.

And he just won’t go away:

Indeed he spends my day

Forcing me to concentrate on him

In the harbour below our farm,

He a bit the opposite of a nightmare.

And somehow subtly he becomes a welcome guest

Whose redundant motions emerge into an admired dance:

That tail fin swishing back & forth,

Back & forth, back & forth, floppy

But still steady as the swing of a pendulum

& that dorsal fin carving through the surface

Like a meat cleaver in a butcher’s shop.

He has that way of putting things not into perspective

But into inviting perplexity,

Of reminding me of all the capricious surprise

Embedded in that profoundly surrounding sea.