Sacrifice

Huge squid beneath the ocean

off-yellow speckled skin streaked with shine 

and reeking of ammonia.  Thirty fall into the depths

Twenty rise again.  

The others remain on the cloudy floor 

stirring the mud with their pointed arms

making huge bowls from the ocean clay 

and uncovering the skulls of blue whales.

Each long beast wraps a skull in her ams and slowly rises to the sun.  

As the pressure drops, they swell, and split like boiled hot dogs, 

lofting their green treasures briefly back to the surface 

and celebrating the unspoken treaty between the vertibrated and invertebrate.

Seagulls pick the floating carcasses, 

tangled like dirty mops.  

Dolphins chase them away

The smell of bait is overpowering.  

Tuna, doomed for sushi, circle and nibble.