Nostalgia
A girl I don't know whispers to me
through the klaxon-clamor chaos
of another pulsing Royal Street bar.
I remember whispers on your porch
keeping still, warm nights company
years ago. How you thought maybe
"whisper" came from the word wisp:
wisps of voices, of our conversations.
Bathed in a laptop's sympathetic glow
we traced the thread all the way back
to Norway. "Hviskra," to speak softly.

I always pictured Norway in its winter,
people finally unfurling themselves
in the quiet privacy of one another
their anxieties and apathies undone
like so many paper cranes unfolded.
Each pair connected to every other
by the song of whales, drifting over
the sleeping country from the sea:
an invisible and ethereal spider web.

Whale songs are older than the words
used to describe them. Forged in the
deep, black blackness of the oceans
back when the continents were blank
and nobody had thought of a god yet.
Imagine the first whale song, a primal
melody rising from the crushing depths,
its echoes reverberating across the sea
ever since, the ages moving to its tune
like a divine plan. But it grows fainter,
just a whisper that night on your porch.

Back on Royal Street, we're superheros.
Handgrenades impart gifts of teleportation.
Flash! bar. Flash! teeming Canal street.
Flash! the streetcar, and then off to bed,
moving as if swept by a tide from behind,
superheros finally unmasked. This unknown
quantity nuzzles her nose on my chest
and sigh-purrs a satiated "mmm," as if
she was humming a song she had heard a long
time ago. Her hair feels like your hair.
I close my eyes and drift into dreams.