Whale Songs

Music class starts late again today.
My phonograph is not the 
mellophones, percussion or
glockenspiel that lets them feel
their shy effect. (I have promised and now they're late.)
But, today that's all there is.

We listen to the whale record.
We listen to their 
haunting bray.
These watery ghosts
rising from the livid depths
have chilled the souls of 
fiercer hands.

My students tell me that the
whales are lonely, sad
forgotten. 
(why do they say this?)

Tomorrow or the next day,
I will sit at lunch and watch
Vercillia with her
charred hands
probing the shiny
glockenspiel.

But today
we sit transfixed,
listening to dark
leviathon
speak with the
lips of children.