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Whales Breathe
Whales Breathe


Temporary Installation, Cabrillo National Monument whale watch overlook

Original poem, written for the Urban Ocean Festival, inscribed across the slats facing the sea, in such a way that the text is invisible in fine weather (when visitors look at the sea), becoming readable only in the dense fog common there.


Whales Breathe

The earth murmurs
whales breathe
stones whisper sounds
caught
a million years ago.

Listen to the brush shimmer
and the packed rolling sand
figures played here, a carousel
of children
turning history.

The sea’s fingers close
around timeless passages
waves folding
behind blank fog.

The earth murmurs
whales breathe.

-Lisa Jetonne