Whale Watch

One day you wake up at the Beach On the Oregon Coast Not expecting the day to be Any more exceptional than another When In front of you Through the plate glass window Of your comfortable bungalonian Abode you spy The spout of a whale A grey whale traveling north To its Alaskan feeding ground Not so unusual at this time of the year When suddenly In the next moment The great behemoth Leaps out of the waves Twists in the sun And falls back-first into the Mesmerizing deep A few seconds more Then a second joyful and Exuberant leap Then a third Then a fourth Then a fifth And a sixth! And then nothing Your breath ripped out of Your lungs You gasp Stunned Disbelieving Before all is returned To the platitude of Normalcy Was it a dream or was It the truth? Will you ever see anything Like it, in person, in the flesh Ever, or Never In the expanding wave of possibility Again? If only our lives could be lived With such ecstatic boundless Irrepressible abandon The grateful explosion of life's exhilarant splash Enough to make every day A revelation and a wonder Never to be denied In the split second spark Of Eternity. ~ Laurence Overmire