Will the fin-backed whale now rise?
it cannot, sadly, as it is turned on its side,
without a murmur, without hope, no voice,
it must submit like a skateboard slope
to the indignity of use, as it a massive
grey spectacle, a banked scow, lies
where it should not be, in Vejle fjord,
gone to ground in sickness, slowly it dies,
they talk of biology and of dissection
already, anxious to find the cause of death,
before life has left its body, would you do
this to your kid brother, assemble next
to his bed, eating popcorn or icecream
as he in his frailty, last moments of light
leaves the world, playback his expiration,
would you not seek to comfort him, to ease
his end, to show humanity, instead of science,
that measures him in numbers instead of words,
leaves to cold objectivity without interference?
But see here, some do care, firemen spray water,
and they seek to return him to the open seas
and they express against the odds determination,
they want him to succeed, to put him right,
they want this rare and over hunted animal
to survive, yet, in the back of scientists' minds some
would like dearly to bury him and place a tombstone
upon him, in the form of a scholarly textbook
devoted to the causes and effects of a whale banked.
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