Some days it rains in California. You wonder
if the sun got lost on its way to work.
When it rains and rains, you consider filing
a missing planet’s report. You have a stiff drink
on a Monday and read about a whale found dead
in the Amazon forest. Think there ought to be
an autopsy because the body can be opened
and studied like that. Its components filed
into numbered lists. A young male humpback

evokes the idea of sexual pursuit, of pleasure
and you can’t help but think, of love. You wonder
if he thought of it like that. If he had the capacity
or is it all a matter of God’s handiwork. And you wonder
if the young whale’s mother waited up for him with
reheated dinners. Your mother’s coolness is a canopy
under which you live and you wonder
if any of it made it into your own DNA. Once,
three beautiful young men asked are you okay where
you stood on crutches, a leg in cast waiting for a friend.
You wondered if they knew some days you stood
in a beautiful gown waiting for no one. The young whale
lies under the rain forest allowed to decompose where
there is no ice to crack its ceiling but you wonder
if he ever cried so hard his rib cage was crushed
under the weight of the smallest inhale. You wonder

if technology would ever get smart enough
to autopsy a mind, a soul or whatever you call it
and see which brain synapse survives the missing
and the transplantations out of one’s god-given
migration path. That’s how the whale wound up
in that forest. Curiosity. Turns out it, too, wanted
to know more than what the body can do. You wonder
if anyone is curious about what doesn’t appear broken
from the outside. Or where was the water that created
the biblical flood. Why do they always put the man’s
name before the big fish even though God created
animals first. You drink the last of your ice, its cold
breath floods the roof of your mouth, the soft plains
of your tongue, the mysterious opening of a body’s
unstudied doors.

This poem was inspired by Jessica Lind Peterson’s essay, “Strange Season,” published in Orion magazine.