Whale

From infancy, we’re in its guts,

The beggars and the golden Tuts,

Until, when the Whaler cuts

Through blubber and sets us free,

We dive and thrash the freezing sea.

Decades on we still remember:

We were like insects in amber,

Protected, even transported,

Blind, yes, our hearing distorted

By the aggravated rumble

Of its great heart. We were humbled,

Every one of us alone.

We each had our one whale to own,

Yet we escaped to live or drown.

Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (Simon de Myle), Sonnet #372

A billion species marched into the Ark.

Not one died off while the rain descended.

But Mt. Ararat was no pleasure park

And there half the lives Noah saved ended.

The suspension of the natural laws

That some will eat and some will be devoured

Vanished; unicorns found the lion’s jaws.

Raptors gorged on vermin and dragons scoured

The skies, while all fled the talons of the Roc,

A ravening, single, soon extinct cock.

Years on, man remade his cities and farms

And with the dispersal of beasts still wild,

Returned to the innocence of a child,

Immune to all but humanity’s harms.

The Seventh Plague: Hail and Fire (John Martin), Sonnet #323

It froze us in small blocks of ice
And rolled us down the streets like dice.
It melted us with filthy light
And left us purified of blight,
Exhausted, blameless and alone,
The roaches and pigeons gone.
We never saw a cloud again.
Instead appeared new kinds of men.
They smiled but we ran from them,
From their split tongues and spit venom.
They gladly swallowed the locusts
When they came, as well as our lusts.
The darkness never descended.
The promised end never ended.