In Living Colour Poem by John Beaton

In Living Colour

From parting seas, the grey's great knuckled back,
where barnacles and orange whale-lice ride,
rises like a headland, mottled hide
distressed with scar-patched scratches. The Zodiac
planes in. Its watchers gasp—the behemoth
bows to plumb the pools of aquamarine
sand, to siphon shrimp through combs of baleen;
its tail-flukes slip from boils of whorls and froth.

An orca's dorsal sets the second scene—
a whale in black and white, an exhibition
of contrasts limned in balanced composition.
Another, another, another, crumpling the green
veneer—cameras swing and click, give chase;
a sea-lion breaches, red, with half a face.