Stink

The stink
draws from you
a cry of “my goodness”

for the whale
of a whale carcass
stranded on the beach.

You call out for goodness
as if it were perfume
against stink.

You call out “my goodness”
as if it would help
at this point,

as if death
were opposed
to goodness,

as if goodness
could deodorize
death.

What you call for
doesn’t matter now
to the whale, or course,

but it’s all you have
to reach for
in this life where

we say
cleanliness
is next to something

we see as akin to goodness,
and stink and decay
signal evil.

My goodness — with this
attitude, you and I will never know
the other half of the world —

the half that stinks,
the half that lets us down,
the half we cannot avoid;

and if we killed the whale somehow,
don’t we need
to set our own goodness aside

and breathe in
what we’ve done
if anything is to change?