Myth of Arrival

One of the curious things about Great White Sharks is their habit of searching for boats. Like a cat exploring a new object they rub their blunt noses around the rudder and keel and then raise themselves horizontal, bringing their entire heads out of the water. The Great White will then remain in this position for some time. Some scientists believe this is a method for the shark to see what is about them, since their eye sight is rather poor. However, if you reach out and rub your hand across their snout a very interesting thing will happen. The shark will roll slowly back into the water, in a stupor-like state. The shark does not seem to mind this, in fact in it is reported in The Great White Shark (1991) by Richard Ellis and John McCosker that one went back several times to have its nose rubbed. This behavior is centered around the shark's navigational system, which is found:

in clusters of pores scattered around the shark's head … inside these pores are small cells, called ampullae of Lorenzini, which are filled with a gel-like substance that can conduct electricity. Each cell also has a tiny hair within it. When a charge goes through the gel, it also passes through the hair, which triggers a sensory signal … [however] a gentle hand on the snout is enough to overwhelm the shark's powerful electro-receptors and send it into a momentary coma-like state …

This fascinates me. We know hardly anything about these animals and yet within our lifetime they will disappear from our oceans forever. We know that Great Whites mate for life. They have such small litters of pups (1 or 2 in a five year span) there is no way they can build back their populations. Also, I found out, they migrate; crossing the oceans as the seasons change. The more I study them the more their behavior reminds me of my own cat. However, pollution and sport and long line fishing have wiped out many of the larger shark populations around the world. Pablo Neruda says one of the obligations of being a poet is to:

ceaselessly … listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in [our] awareness …
[we] must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation…
through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart."

And since the sea is the greatest teacher of them all and everything that lives in its waters are like saints; so, I believe, to hunt some of the oldest animals on earth until there are none left is a crime. A terrible crime that will come back to haunt us, just as all the crimes we have committed against this planet have come back with a fury.

she

This is about the eyes. There
is a certain sorrow. There
is something sorrowful
in those dull lids and
the rough snout rising
out of that immense green
darkness, answering
your call. “Darkling,

I listen,” Keats wrote.
We all want to make out
like thieves anyway; be
at last somebody's
muse and make away
just like highway bandits.
But how? when we won't

even stretch out our arm
and rub the regal stormy nose?
Can you hear that? Why else
would she be there for us?
Those yawning jaws
grant a quick glance
into our abandon and
those eyes know all about
abandonment. Let go

of the salt on your tongue.
Reach out; stroke that
spirit so close to the boat
you can hear her breathing.
And suddenly you know

the obvious answer
reflected back in
that spirit,
little darkling,
reflected back to you
because you listened.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Original Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.