In the Valley of Salt

~Laurie Klein I Before the Wind High on mulled air, the bos’n stood lookout, alive to salt, alert to wing and wind, the tang of land, when starboard a tempest arose, driving a city of waves— Avast! he cried. Stern to hull, timbers groaned. Jettisoned cargo sundered the whitecaps, sailors prayed, and the pacing captain bellowed for Jonah, hammocked below, lost in nightmare: a gaping lip like a swamped skiff, a peninsular shore, fringed with kelp. With an almighty heave she breached, and that sighted coal in its socket, that eye like an oven burned, turned on the dreamer with lasic force. And Jonah quailed at the captain’s shout, shaken awake. The gale howled; lots were cast. Leviathan rumbled, keening below. Now God’s fugitive kneels at the rail and cradles his head; skull bones chime. "Out!” he cries. “Gristle, fin and marrowbone, I have been chosen. T’is my wedding night, mates.” II Jonah's Wale Addresses the Almighty Ruler of oceans, who can fathom your summons? Pity this small throat aching for everyday air. Doubts are lice, eating into this brain and heart. With a word, I’m consigned to an unknown shore. Oh, maker of magnificent tails, reconsider stranding this body far from the circle of my kind, errand girl for your dirty work: I, your unholy bride, your eager breakers my jealous attendants—they batter my flesh. Yes, they will flense my flesh. Never mind. Let the dripping thing live. Whatever end you design in kindness will close its mouth over me. Not to leap, not to swim, but once more let me sink into you, before beaching. III Jonah, Within Rib to rib I’m flung, my robe rotting off bone. Am I krill to be sieved, then excreted, a gruel of cells tainting your sea? Let me die, curled in this pulsing sac, your words rising like bile, singeing tonsils and tongue, your briny God-talk likely to split a lip, score the roof of a mouth. Ancient of Days, no one will heed such a walking blight, or welcome a warning planted like tares in my breastbone— eyeless roots, nosing down windpipe, tentacles trussing each lung as I choke out a vow, a squall of diphthongs. V Stranding Into the wind’s eye leviathan slews, gulping flesh—her pleated throat swells. Surf churns and, ignoring soundings, she runs aground—dorsal fin listing hard, her underside a rounded keel, half- embedded. How those eyes smolder, embers in an iron helmet, drenched in spume. Backwash roils, a stun of water everywhere. Aye, the wake unravels for leagues. Constellations of shadow swarm skull and spine, the nave of ribs. Networked with oils and braids of kelp the whale lies, self-moored, veiled with steam, flippers like wings, sculling air. From the great eyelids and over the monstrous jaws, glutinous strings loop like hawsers, festooning a face: Jehovah’s tears, shawling her body. VI Threshold From lifted flukes to jaw, the marbled halls of muscle convulse. Each wave is a gable, an eave that shudders loose from a sacred pavilion. Debris litters sand. Like a shed, fallen-in, stirred by wind, her voice sounds like ten-penny nails, wrested from oak beams. Through aqueous light, guttering now, she sees him stumble clear of the ambergris before it hardens. Groaning, she angles her corridor of neck nearer to water. For hours, all her doors will lie open. Jonah will kneel to stroke her hide, cupping brine in withered palms, pouring his thanks, over and over.