Wild Dark Shore

by Charlotte McConaghy

what gets him out here at the crack of dawn, even in freezing temperatures and miserably windy conditions that skew the sound results, is the possibility of hearing the song of a whale. He was born the day he first heard the song of a whale, and he has been finding ways to record them ever since. In one moment high and squeaking like the top note of a violin, in the next guttural, echoing, some space between the moan of a cow and the trumpet of an elephant. Sometimes joyous and playful, sometimes mournful and searching. Sometimes with a trill or a creak or a rumble. A question, a call, a love letter.

I feel sorry that they have to live in darkness, in this place of death, instead of bursting to life up above as they were meant to. I feel sorry for all the boxes we are leaving on the shelves.

Is this how you feel after being swept in on a current? Will you change shape and put down roots? Or carry on in search of somewhere better?

I think love expands when it needs to, it adapts, it embraces.

But here is the nature of life. That we must love things with our whole selves, knowing they will die.