Measure of our Span

for the whales

They resonate with echoes of a consciousness at home in space,
a seventh sense innate to certain mariners we still admire,
and when the Earth succumbs to immolation in the sun's great fire,
their soundings may resurface as the sense that saves our nomad race.
Cetacean lore that loops the globe may pilot us beyond our base
when time runs out and human vision tests its limits, to aspire
to continuity on Mars, when Earth falls hostage to sun's gyre
and we must flee our cradle for another staging-place.

But if in ages yet to come we call another planet home,
will there be whales and dolphins, oceans where the great seafarers roam?
Will there be birds and trees, and fruit upon the bough, and fields to plough
in that new era that unfolds millennia from now?
To love Earth's fellow-creatures and protect them while we can
is the design and privilege and measure of our span…