Eastham, Massachusetts
One of the spectators is disappointed
there isn’t a guide to explain
the beaching, the scientists busy
cutting into ninety-four pilot whales
stranded on the salt grass.
No one knows why and, try as the rescue team
might, not one whale will go back to water.
So they’re injected to speed up the dying,
Then it was the future, though what’s arrived
isn’t what we had in mind, all chrome and
cybernetics, when we set up exhibits
in the cafeteria for the judges
to review what we’d made of our hypotheses.
The class skeptic (he later refused to sign
anyone’s yearbook, calling it a sentimental
degradation of language) chloroformed mice,
weighing the bodies before and after
to catch the weight of the soul,
