Whalebone Poem by Majella Callaghan

The west’s prevailing onshore winds have
finally fleshed your ribs with the coarseness
of limestone, granite and quartz, a curling
cavern scrimshawed by travelling sands
that take your stories to the ears of
migrating dunes. Huge jaws agape without
the fringe of baleen, I feel denied a
tactile curiosity: sifter,
comber of ancient world populations;
what journeys have filtered through your years?

‘Greyhound of the Sea’
with arm’s-length vertebrae, the bleached hinges
of leathery curved moments in wetted sunshine.
Their whiteness remains here, silently, in
a broken row of stops that muted the
bellows of your song many tides ago.

I step into the vacancy of your
belly, Fin, imprisoned by the absence
of blubber and decadence, a Jonah
who longs to learn the old way of breathing.