Poetry

May 11, 2018 Poetry , POETRY / FICTION

As I meditate my way into sleep, images surface.

A whale eyes an elephant across a great divide.

Their mammoth presence is equally balanced

in each hemisphere across the corpus collosum.

This thin bridge separates the two spheres as if

they were different dimensions now in contact.

Whale swims her blue ocean in the left hemisphere.

Elephant strides out from jungle fronds into sunny

desert of tawny brown. Huge eyes interlock intensely,

sending signals I don’t understand, communicating

with one another by sonar vibrations. The sound is

too low for me to interpret though my chest resonates.

As if I’m anxiously eavesdropping at my parents’ door

in the uneasy certainty they’re discussing my mishaps.

As if leviathan and behemoth are the adults in the room,

comparing notes on young humanity’s last misadventure

and its consequences for the future of the planet that such

magnificent, concerned creatures share between them, for now.

Penn Kemp is an activist Canadian poet, playwright and editor. Her latest works are two plays celebrating local hero and explorer, Teresa Harris, produced in 2017 and published by Playwrights Guild of Canada. Recent books include Barbaric Cultural Practice (quattrobooks.ca/books/barbaric-cultural-practice/) and two anthologies edited, Women and Multimedia and Performing Women (http://poets.ca/feministcaucus/livingarchives/). See www.pennkemp.weebly.com.