If you’re feeling weighted down by the world’s heaviness or the August heat, here’s a poem by my father to lift your spirits. Scott Bates is, as Wordsworth puts it in Tintern Abbey, “a lover of the meadows and the woods and mountains; and of all that we behold from this green earth.”He also loves oceans and whales, the subject of this poem.
I thought of “Whales” because my son Darien is down visiting us from Manhattan and the poem is filled with New York City images. Enjoy:
Whales
Whales have a tendency to move heavily
On land it’s all that blubber
Keeps Whales from skipping down the street like little girls
Or balls of rubber
For if by chance a Whale you should encounter
Lumbering
Down Madison Avenue
On the first day of Spring
You would perhaps be reminded of The New York Public Library
Trundling through the park
On a midsummer’s eve surrounded by children
Or of Noah’s Ark
Or of the Pennsylvania Station
But if you should become a Gull
Drifting quietly over the Antarctic Ocean
Illimitable and cool
You would see Whales below like Swallows dance
Like Swallows on a pond
They would skip off lightly across the green water
And soar without a sound
Notice how the poem allows us to slip the bonds not only of gravity but also of dull reality. We can imagine ourselves as children gazing entranced as a whale—or is it the New York Public Library by now?—trundles through Central Park. So next time you feel that you are just dragging through the day, touch base with your inner skipping whale. Or your gliding gull.