Poems by Jessica Gregg

Call and Response

by Jessica Gregg

From Canary Spring 2021

Jessica grew up and continues to live in the watershed of the Chesapeake Bay, in a corner of corn fields, foxes, and plenty of opportunities for stargazing.

In the blue-lid days of summertime,
ice melts with cracked glass fissure
and explosion, the collapsed calving
of frozen earth, sheering skin,
breaking bones. Spring leaks
into summer, glacial into cascade,
a tearing and renting of gray.
This is not a silent act nor
a peaceful transformation,
but clattering kettle drum rumbles
of awakening and resurrection,
captured on underwater microphones
meant to trap Soviet submarines.
Here, too, can be heard a percussion
of snorts and flute pitch whines,
the tuning fork of the blue whale
and its steady beat metronome.
This collective chorus of whale song
must out-shout, out-perform
the ice-letting and weeping
of season change. Calling to each other,
the whales moan louder and louder.
The earth shrugs off layers of winter,
layers of human waste until
the humpbacks synchronize.
They signal, their sameness silencing.
A sea-born anthem, a song of creation,
guttural gasps in deep-belly ocean.
Together, these whales make one song,
each for a mate, each note, each thread
the same, competing against the ice
crash of earth’s warming, a soundtrack.
The ecstasy of being alive, and uttered.