Watching Blue Planet I Think of the Afterlife
and wonder if David Attenborough will be there
to guide me or if anyone will be there or if it will
look anything like this dead whale sinking
down the screen, torn apart and falling for months
through deep water, becoming all the time less whale,
more something else. Even when there’s no meat left
and specialized feeders have drunk from the bones,
at least a million tiny particles will still be falling
even then, weightless but for their unknown
destinations. Drifting alongside these millions
of particles will be millions of others from different
drifting corpses, and each dot will resemble
every other dot, though the dead are of infinite
shape and color. On the ocean floor sit angels
dressed as strange fish, mouths agape, swallowing
the black, sun-shunned sea by the mouthful
and holding tight to anything once alive.