Ceto

She was my first.
Two whole summers
I carried her.
By the second July
her wriggling
made me piss in the water;
September, and the pressure
wrung me like a sponge.
Her tiny tail slithered out
and fluttered like a pinwheel,
but I was the one
who spun. Air.
My aunts and sisters
came up with me,
whistling and clicking,
stayed while each clench
hauled me
somewhere far inward.

It took too long.
The calf was still
when the water
finally cottonwooled with blood.
A week now since her birth,
her eyes have gone gauzy.
Her stitching has split
and the satin of her skin
is unraveling.
Motherhood is a needle
without thread or thimble.
When the whale lifts
her little bundle
to the surface to breathe,
an elder nuzzles her back.
Even in sleep she must tuck
her baby’s head into her fin,
hold her threadbare tail in her mouth.