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.