A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem
but in this poem nothing dies.
Alone in the poem, I make myself
brave. No—I show brave
to my body, take both to the ocean.
Come hurricane, come rip current,
come toxic algal bloom.
In March, I drift past the estuary
to watch an eight-foot dolphin
lap the Mill River
like a cat pacing a bathtub,
sick and disoriented.
Biologists will unspool her empty intestines,
weigh her gray cerebellum.
She swam a great distance to die
alone. I’m sorry—I lied. I can’t control
what lives or dies. I need a place
to stow my brain. To hold
each moment close as a sand flea
caught in my knuckle hairs.
Please, someone—
tell me a poem can coax
oil from a sea bird’s throat.
Tell me what to do
with my hands—my hands—
what can my hands do now?
Copyright © 2025 by Rachel Dillon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 27, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem began as an exploration of the tension between my two selves: the poet self who wanders the wilderness, and the real-world self who lives in a city and tends to be more fearful. Poetry allows me to create worlds in which I am brave and gives me a chance to visit spaces I don’t normally have access to. This poem reminds me that if I can explore what scares me on the page—from the passage of time to the climate crisis—then it’s possible to confront what scares me in life, too; and that a poem ending with a question can offer a kind of answer. It also owes a debt of gratitude to H. R. Webster’s poem ‘Dog Bite,’ which begins with the line, ‘At the end of this poem the dog dies.’”
—Rachel Dillon
Rachel Dillon
