Love Song for David Attenborough

                                              Dayna Patterson

 

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You show us how blue whales mate.

 

Their massive bodies

breaking surface.

 

The male’s arm-like penis strokes.

 

She rolls, rolls—

self-defense against

 

gallons of semen, a year of pregnancy.

 

At length, she relents,

descends

 

to a bed of blue, sheets of bubbles.

 

Their car-sized hearts

rev

 

as ours rev for you, eyes glistening,

 

Dr. Secret Keeper,

Dr. Nature Watcher,

 

your voice drenched with wonder.

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Dayna Patterson is an MFA candidate at Western Washington University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in North American Review, REAL, Weave, and others. She is Managing Editor of Bellingham Review, Poetry Editor for Psaltery & Lyre, and her chapbooks, Loose Threads and Mothering, are available from Flutter Press.

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