Whale Fall
Beijing, China
2021, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
i.
Follow the retreating wave under your feet and look into the distance.
Under the unending azure, in the boundless dark
Countless fortune wheel junctions, endless gears connect life and death.
A long cry.
A whale falls from deep blue to deep blue and to the darkness, passing through all
Just as the Buddha feeds the eagle with his body. Death is but the first step to rebirth.
Dolphins jump, jellyfish hover, ten thousands of fish flying between the blue, life, and death.
Existence is the right given to them by nature; beauty and pleasure are the meaning inborn.
Now follow the plastic left behind by the tide and look,
The rusty iron left by the industrial revolution is now printed on the transparent gear.
Hundred million years of purity, stained rust red by compatriot’s blood.
With a loud explosion, the whale become a huge mess of flesh
the smell of putrefaction appears with the light of dawn.
Never imagine that the next day everything will fade with the tide.
The stigma of humanity will never fade.
ii.
The ocean is eroded by rotten gas and the stench of money
Whining, the blades made of flesh and blood spread through it
Pointing toward the money pot, pointing towards the blood at the gate of the factory.
I stand on the river pebbles far away and sniff the blood.
But in the next moment, the distant blood creeps to the sole of the foot.
There lay a rusty dolphin staring with its white eyes.
Reflection
Reflection
Living creatures in the ocean have always seemed cool to me—the ocean looks like another world that lives with us and that also lives by itself with its own unique ecosystem. One of the parts of the ecosystem that I love the most is the whale fall. I am fascinated about how it could impact the whole ecosystem—how life and death are connected together so tightly. However, when I did research for this contest, I saw the other side of whale falls—the whale on the land. If the whale dies on land and is not disposed of fast enough, it will explode and relesase all of these stinky smells. When I connect the exploding whale to a whale fall, I think maybe sometimes we should just leave space between humans and creatures. I used the contrast between these two events as metaphors in my poem. I grew up in a city nowhere near the sea. However, even though I am far away from the ocean, I still understand how it is connected to me, how it is connected to everyone.