Lee Woodman’s essays and poems have been published in Tiferet Journal, Zócalo Public Square, Grey Sparrow Press, The Ekphrastic Review, vox poetica, The New Guard Review, The Concord Monitor, The Hill Rag, Naugatuck River Review, and The Broadkill Review. Her poetry collection, Mindscapes, was published by Poets’ Choice Publishing in 2020, Homescapes in 2020 by Finishing Line Press, Lifescapes by Kelsay Books in 2021, and Artscapes by Shanti Arts in 2022.
—inspired by “The 17th Day,” a short story by Christina Cogswell, telling that 75% of orca calves died in the Salish Sea, off Puget Sound, in 2018, due to PCBs from shipyards, manufacturing, slaughter houses, and Superfund clean-up sites
The world always begins in the ocean,
in many seas around the globe, as moonlight moves across water
And Tahlequah, resident orca J-35, swam for seventeen days in Salish, pushing her
dead newborn. She would not let her baby, 400 pounds heavy, submerge
Breathing for Tahlequah was a conscious act—she had to come to the surface for air
every twelve minutes; she nosed her daughter’s limp body with her
This was her “Tour of Grief,” but she did not go it alone. For millions of years,
orcas have lived in matrilineal pods. A cast of five or six surrounded her.
She was not the only one to push the body; they took
turns. On the seventeenth day, Tahlequah dropped the baby, went to the top for air
letting her calf be reclaimed by the sea’s blue womb, letting it drift away.
The orcas stayed with her at the surface, dipping and rising in mourning
A tightknit group, they circled in harmony,
directly centered in a moonbeam, even as it moved across the waves
