Orca J35 Sings to Her Dead Calf
Tina Blade
I will move you gently through the long days
of water I cannot move through without you.
I will push you before me like the moon,
carry you through fog and muffled night.
When you slip, I will dive, catch, and lift you up
to break again the broken surface against
the broken sky. I will push you in a silver wave
before me, tell you each and every story
of clouds and kelp and waves and salt
and fat salmon and stars—that would be ours.
I will carry you—my deepest joy of this
sad water— deeper than the deepest water can go.
NOTE: In 2018, killer whale J35 (Tahlequah), of the endangered Southern Resident J pod, gave birth to a calf that lived for only about 30 minutes. J35 carried the calf’s body for 17 days before finally letting it go.
Tina Blade lives in Duvall, WA, east of Seattle in the Snoqualmie River Valley. She received her MFA from University of Oregon. Her work has appeared in The Moth, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Calyx, Mid-American Review, Menacing Hedge and others. She is currently working on her chapbook, Broken Blue Egg.