How You Once Sang Like A Whale To Me Poem by Mark Heathcote

Let your legs dangle free like a rope chain
I might clench and tug at will.
With all my strength, I shall enter
at close quarters this open-mouthed estuary,
and linger like a beach becalmed sailboat.
I shall gaze at these foothills under the moonlight
with a sliver of silken sail
and imagine my death in you, like a serpent swallowing its-own-tail
always-eternal-my darling,
always-eternal-my darling like the waves on the sea
and if I drown-like a beached whale
and if I die, don't cry for me
just-remember the clench and tug I held you with.
And how you once sang like a harpooned whale to me.