[The whale already]

Kimiko Hahn

^{a golden shovel}

^{The whale already taken got away: the moon alone
—Yosa Buson, translated by Hiroaki Sato}

What is endangered, the
rest of us ignore. The whale,
loved by children and cartoonists, already
dwindles. Bycatch has taken
them. The tiny creatures they consume haven’t got
a chance to outlast the warming. A way
to safeguard whales is to deny ourselves the
discs and car exhaust. The moon
sees us at all cost alone.

Copyright © 2022 by Kimiko Hahn. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 11, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.