As if by chance, a burl unleashed
The beauty of a fluke beneath—
A fragment of the whale’s great soul,
Rising from the water’s depth below.

My spirit drifts with whales today;
The tales they tell, a soul a day—
Old stories carved in living grain,
Where sorrow, strength, and oceans wane.

If by thought romance was there,
The tale of misfortune, lost in despair,
Still whispers through the waters below—
A call the heart cannot bestow.

The photo captures soul beneath
The deep blue sea, in all its grief;
Yet wood remembers more than film—
It holds the pulse from within.

With love for thought, now caught in form,
The whale’s great size defies the norm.
Its tail breaks through the sculpted rim—
A gesture fierce, alive, within.

It rises proud, its stride unfurled—
A mythic echo in this world.
He smashes his tail with mighty rebuke—

Not by chance, but with a grand fluke.

Author Michelle McCutchon