WHALE WATCHING OFF THE COAST OF RAUSU

THOMAS FARR

I spy their fins above the waves—dark rise disrupts the steely ocean’s noumenal meditation. Water crashes. Magpie flanks breach and turn; saddle-patched, beautiful.

We watch them graze Nemuro Strait. Social by nature, tight-knit, matrilineal; their eyes set low, blotched by huge white ovals like robbers’ masks. Ghostly, ethereal, their monodies—those folklores of the soul alike in man and beast—float solemnly through wide sea skies. The wind cuts in. Thin, cold, it scatters their songs across watery leagues. And in Taiji pods of pilot whales are slaughtered, hauled ashore in silence.

THOMAS FARR is a British writer of fiction and poetry, much of whose work explores and challenges the human/ nature binary. He has appeared or is forthcoming in Livina Press, Tales to Terrify, Aôthen Magazine, Ram Eye Press, The Jupiter Review, what’s the theme zine, tiny wren lit, Red Wolf Periodical, and elsewhere. He tweets @tfarrpoetry.