A mother gray whale
watches orcas savage
and slay her calf;

she lingers in the red sea
for a moment, then
continues on alone.

The calf’s carcass drifts toward
the bottom of the shallows
where it will serve its killers

as a meal to be consumed
at their leisure. I don’t cry —
not for that calf

who after all was simply in
the wrong place at the wrong time
or the right place if you believe

all things happen for a reason,
nor for that mother who lingers briefly
then moves on, nor for the orcas 

who need to feed and are only doing
what they are designed to do. I think
I’m going to cry for the documentarian

who watched these things happen
without being able to affect an outcome,
without wanting perhaps even to try —

I don’t know if that’s fair, or true; maybe
they began this work seeking that
and slipped away from it the way a corpse

dissolves to gray when it is finished
with living. In moments of such drift
perhaps they turn back towards themselves

and say there’s still hope it will change
something, awaken a viewer into action 
on behalf of those things which can be changed.

I say this on a night when video
of Laquan McDonald’s murder by cop
on a Chicago street pushes throngs

into action. No one stood
behind that camera. No one watching can see
anything there that had to happen.

No one could say that the cops were doing
what they had to, although it may be
what they were designed to do. 

No camera shows
a mother lingering
over his body. 

Nothing in any film yet made
suggests anyone is moving on;
no natural order

here, no sweet music
of the circle of life.
It’s not that kind of killing. It’s our kind —

unnecessary blood
on the street, on our hands,
on all the surfaces of earth and sea.

Wherever the next camera will be,
wherever
the next killing will be —

right place,
wrong place, right time,
wrong time —

are you going to want to see
the documentary
someone’s going to make

about what you do
when a murder happens
right in front of you? If I say

a murder is happening 
in front of you now — in fact,
several murders, many murders,

hundreds and thousands of murders,
collateral deaths and even more casual
snuffings of spirit that sometimes leave bodies intact

long after they should have drifted off
to the darkness — what will you do then?
Will you chalk it up to orcas being orcas

or will you try to speak, intervene, at least
be witness to it all? Maybe turn away, step out of view,
and say shamefaced there is nothing you can do,

say there’s nothing to be done? I wish I knew
what to say to that.  All I feel right now is the sting
of spray from the cold face of the sea.