the first intersex whale 

why is it that we are always discovered?
i have spent all morning reading about
the discovery of the first intersex whale. 
how their blood was taken & sifted like sand. 
the scientist "baffled" by all their combinations.
organs & chromosomes & cosmos.  
i become obsessed with the idea
of meeting them. of whispering into
their giant ear, "i know you are not the first."
to be a poet is to think too much about
everything. of course the scientists are just
doing their jobs & the headlines are just
writing the easy world. i want to know
the history as told by intersex whales. i want 
to know their hungers & their stories. 
i crave the story of the true first in the dark
& ancient world. how the others flocked
around them & called them, "miracle."
we are not aberrations. we are the whole
digging in her heels. i discovered myself
before a doctor discovered me. my blood
like a waterfall inside the ocean. i have 
a slingshot chromosome & a spirit that fits
inside a whale's heart. i follow their chronology
because it is ours. maybe we would talk
about what it means to use a body 
as a bridge. the whale is the vessel of return. 
the land spirit who walks back. finds legs 
in the water sky. maybe there is no such thing
as a first intersex whale. each of us like beads
counted back into the song of the world.