He walked down to the pier

and jumped.

They said

he wanted nothing more than

the bloody belly of a whale

to bring him back

to the Pemaquid,

where he could gracefully die

in that deepest deep

of mammalian sighs.

The dolphins keep

the sharks at bay

while

two old broken schooners

sail on to heaven,

twelve children stroking

their soggy-wood-salt-skin.

In circles,

a helicopter whirrs.

Rescue workers

bleating back and forth

across a viscous sea,

warns the others

of this love,

and loss.

Troy Casa is a bookstore manager and organizer of literary events in Bangor. His recent chapbook of poems is “the stark realities that surround Texas.”