this whale, poem by Mark Redford (My Meta-morphosis Series)

this whale

which brushed past me –
as big as a neighbourhood
impossibly swimming
mysteriously swimming
but swimming – its huge fin just
touched me imperturbable the way things are done
imperturbable the way things are

I have tried to create things –
magnificent and inexorable –
but the whale is nothing
and my creations are nothing but
swirls and currents

there never was a whale
there never is myself

hold
look

turn into the current

recede and
disappear

IMAGE: The Second Day of Creation” by M.C. Escher (1925).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
By birth and nature Mark Redford has tended awkwardly to the outer reaches or outside of whatever has brought him up.  This has afforded him plenty of side-on observance to notice the high windows of Roan School for Boys, the flatlands grey desks of Lancaster University library, the bay windows of the houses he never lived in and the agendas behind the doors he never opens in the school where he continues to work.  He is married with three adult children which has brought him in from the cold somewhat, but he is ever by the way and difficult to ‘get’; it’s as if he had been scared and fascinated by something huge…