Meet me in 811: Poem-a-Day April 16: Carnival of Force

You enchant me, with your carnival
of force.

Yours is a system of slow.

There is you, the pulley
and there is you, the weight.

Your eyes wide on a hymn.

Your deep song like the turn
of that first,

that earliest of wheels.

I have seen you, little encruster,
in that business of fouling the ships.

Known, little drum machine, you
to tease out food from the drink.

Little thimble of chalk and hard water.

You could be a callus of whiter skin.

You could be a knucklebone. You
who hang on me,

like a conscience.

Hello Friends,

There were so many cetacean visitors breaking the surface of my dreams last night — gray whales, great blue whales, humpbacks, orcas, a pair of Dall's porpoises, belugas, sperm whales, right whales, wrong whales, some whales I don't think exist, some whales I definitely know don't exist. Perhaps something was weighing on my mind... Which weighs more, several dozen whales, all floating freely, swimming, dancing, leaping about, or one tiny nagging barnacle in a spot you can neither see nor reach?

Today's imagined dialogue between a whale and a barnacle is the work of Cecilia Llompart, first published earlier this year as part of the Academy of American Poets' more official-like poem-a-day list.

For another take on whales, weight, the pulley, see poem-a-day April 2, 2007 "Weight, In Passing" by Andrea Haslanger.

Cheers,
Ellen