When the whale is                  circling I will be          lying in the bottom of    the boat committing                plagiary: seven             words or more         wondering the water     frozen.Surviving a heartless         winter feels like elective         surgery: some pain            I signed up for.              For example, why         not Texas? Or California—Northstate,driving a road with          no exits             exiting a house          with no doors.          Pressing my face                    to glass. Why not go somewhere     with no coldness.     Why not peer from the edgeof the boat,          say to the whale:             I read about you.                 Was you, I think            as a girl who cut                  heads off flowers.                          Who examined the mud-bank for tiny.              There is no place where cold             cannot go. Perhaps                a reason. Small          as it may                be.                                            A whale changesthe light of an ocean.         Seems to be circling     its own                          small reason.                A whale knows                      that stealing is                                     necessary for provingone's life is a collection              of activity. Much                                             like the falling of                 snow. An act                that feels much                                      like an act. Confessing:in all my life no one                      ever offered                                          to build me                 a boat.                      But why read         into the absence of              offerings? Why notthink of my whale          as my whale     to examine or leave         unexamined. I suppose         there's no kind way          to leave someone,                      suppose there's no holdin a boat. Just                  a distance from                  water. And life                  is that also:                    collections of distance.                         Would you believe     this began asa love note?      Some desperate unclutching          of sound. But of         what and for                whom? I suppose          there is no place                     where answers stavecoldness. Suppose          I have lost that false             start. Gone plunging my        hands in confession:              It's been years      since I fell in         love with the lightof an ocean.        Since I turned down the sight              of a whale.          Years since I did                                some small something          with snow.