I pick my way beneath an oily wooden dock,
pilings down in sea water,
feet invisible in the dark, searching,
feeling the old belief in danger;
I raise and lower my feet in gravelly sand,
edging between sharp barnacle covered posts
then out on a rotted step
where I hear a great blowing
and in the wide cove a whale,
silver and magnificent
arches its massive fluke
calling me out to open sea.