In New Zealand some years ago forty-six women and thirteen men

– whales to you – crawled onto the beach and drowned in your air.

They were my family . . . my family.

I volunteered for this final voyage to meet them again

By the magnetic moon to the neap tide of the Thames,

Onto your single shingle shore among broken clay pipes, oyster shells,

And worry stones left by fine spring tides.

I have given my life on the cross harbour into the darkened

Mud chute onto the Island gardens of next life

Where I shall meet them again.

We are dark angels navigating the gravitational pull of solar and lunar.

I have a message . . .

You live in one per cent of your thirty per cent of Earth.

Our oceans cover seventy per cent. It is ours. It is yours.

The whale nation knows all your migrations.

We felt the scour of wind rush upon our sea as she surged

From the Caribbean in 1948 and landed in Tilbury on June 22nd.

We felt the trembling footsteps through the great partition of

Landmass of what was, is now, India and Pakistan.

We were rippled by shadows of slave ships, in the Age of Sail,

They whipped the oceans back and cut the skin of sea with cat o’ nine tails,

And we saw those Africans float before us like

Shoals of black squid squirting ink in plumes.

Four hundred years later we felt the tremor of great migration

Of free African slaves from the Deep South to the North.

There is climate change.

Now we feel the down pressure of air as each plane crosses the Channel

Bringing great Polish men and women to these shores.

We feel this in our seas: this is why I was sent by the Ruling Council of Whales

And the Ministry of Oceans and Seas.

Birth is migration from the womb to the open air.

We are all immigrants.

Death is migration of breath and air,

The last migration, the vast migration.

Migration is our nature,

I have been sent to tell you.

Echo location. Echo location.

The Spark Catchers

The Spark Catchers

Tide twists on the Thames and lifts the lea to the brim of Bow

There, shoals of sirens work by way of the waves

At the fire factory, the fortress of flames.

In tidal shifts East London Lampades made

Millions of matches that lit candles for the well-to-do

And the ne’er-do-well to do alike. Strike.

The greatest threat to their lives was

The sulphurous spite-filled spit of diabolo,

The molten madness of a spark.

They became spark catchers, and on the word ‘strike’

A parched arched woman would dive

With hand outstretched to catch the light.

And land like a crouching tiger with fist high,

Holding the malevolent flare tight,

Till it became an ash dot in the palm.

The women applauded the magnificent grace,

The skill it took, the mid-air pirouette,

The precision, perfection and peace.