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lyrics
(Postcards from Nova Scotia
Four walls of fog
rubbing
against two sides
of the boat;
the diesel engine
shutdown leaving us,
twenty empty
vessels in one full one,
bobbing blindly in the
Atlantic.
“Try listening,” a voice,
the guide’s
out of
nowhere, says.
Whale listening, then—
we’ve paid
to listen to whales….
Like pyramid
smelling or
symphony seeing,
not a trade wind,
generally,
to tourist
satisfaction. But
make do
we must,
and so lean
into the soupy silence
like figureheads on sinking
expectations.
But all I hear is
the slop
of water
in the bilge,
a furtive potato
chip,
a man farting somewhere
on a fishing boat,
until a child
finally asks,
“What are
we listening for, anyway?
A splash? Some kind
of song?”
“For something large
and genuine,”
that voice again
replies.
“And like anything
large
and genuine,”
it says,
“you’ll
know it when
you don’t
hear it.”
Ah! Like death, then,
and love,
mercy and sacrifice,
too;
like deceit, grace
and denial;
what fathers don’t
say, all that
Basho didn’t write,
the only thing
Beethoven, finally,
could hear. Oh,
Dear Mother,
I think
you told me, though
I never heard,
how many
whales there are in this world.)
(Fishermen wait
Vessels bob
The ocean is, content to
just be as it always has.
as it should
We know this
But what is it to be its
breathing face?
Its cleansing teeth?
That thing we cling to when
we forget that dinosaurs are real?
The feeling of sated
unknowledge that comes;
that holds
The only god we can see,
and so we scramble onto boats,
praying to just maybe be in the
vicinity of
something
we can't believe
The thing that keeps marine
biologists awake as they
drive back through
the dark to their homes
every night,
counting on their fingers,
again,
and again,
and
again.)
(Light
bends and leans against me
Fingers
trace underneath and between my eyes
These contours
we question and create
Our center
we detach and displace)
credits
from
how many whales there are in this world,
released December 31, 2014
Spoken Word Voice #1 (Postcards from Nova Scotia) - Barbara Keenlyside, written by Christopher Kingsley
Spoken Word Voice #2 - Liam Kingsley, written by Liam Kingsley
Spoken Word Voice #3 - Eddie Maurer, written by Eddie Maurer
Acoustic Guitar, Banjo - Ghost Dads
Upright Bass - Izzy Payero-Cabral
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