Poem of the Week: Kamilah Aisha Moon

Photo by: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Notes on a Mass Stranding      

I.

Huge dashes in the sand, two or three

times a year they swim like words

in a sentence toward the period

of the beach, lured into sunning

themselves like humans do--

forgetting gravity,

smothered in the absence

of waves and high tides.

II.

[Pilot whales beach themselves] when their sonar

becomes scrambled in shallow water

or when a sick member of the pod

heads for shore and others follow

III.

61 of them on top of the South Island

wade into Farewell Spit.

18 needed help with their demises

this time, the sharp mercy

of knives still the slow motion heft

of each ocean heart.

IV.

Yes--even those born pilots,

those who have grown large and graceful

lose their way, found on their sides

season after season.

Is it more natural to care

or not to care?

Terrifying to be reminded a fluke

can fling anything or anyone

out of this world.

V.

Oh, the endings we swim toward

without thinking!

Mysteries of mass wrong turns, sick leaders

and sirens forever sexy                                              

land or sea.

The unequaled rush

and horror of forgetting

ourselves
 

-Kamilah Aisha Moon 

     

Used by permission.

Kamilah Aisha Moon's poetry collection She Has A Name is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Her work has been featured in Harvard Review, jubilat, Sou'wester, Oxford American, Lumina, Callaloo and Villanelles, among other journals and anthologies. A recipient of fellowships to Cave Canem, the Prague Summer Writing Institute, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and The Vermont Studio Center. Moon received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.  

     

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