—On 16 October 2019, the crew of Exploration Vessel Nautilus came upon a whale fall being consumed by deep sea scavengers in California’s Davidson Seamount.

Bless the slick alms
of your flesh,
pilfered
by scavenging gulls
years before your
last leap skyward.

Bless your unhurried
drift through liminal
zones toward
the abyssal.

Bless the unlit empire
that receives you.

Bless scythed rostrum,
forked mandible,
hemal chevrons hung
beneath your broad
tail’s taper.

Bless baleen.
Bless blubber.

Bless the castaway beams
of Nautilus
that render
your bones ghost-
bright.

Bless death’s incessant
alchemy
which transmutes
your stillness
to clamorous
feast for octopi,
gape-jawed
viperfish, a shiver of
bone-eating
Osedax.

Bless the fall
that brought you
here,
the cage of your heart
turned to wings.