Cerulean windows Slow-rippling wonders Dappling freedoms Deepening fathoms Icefloes in winter Life flows in water Shallows in summer Shadowy swimmer Echoes like dreamings Anchorless driftings Flickers and flittings Flukes in the flowings Gleams in the moonlight Glamours at midnight Planktonic breathings Tectonic birthings Icefloes Life-flows Shallows Shadows Flukes and Flickers Gleams and Glamours Windows Wonders Freedoms Fathoms Deepening fathoms Dappling freedoms Under the moon Ultramarine

I have heard their ghosts on waves Singing softly ghostly tales We drift on the winds of this ocean dream The breath of whales lifts our sails The breath of the ocean is calling out, calling out… The breath, the breath, the breath… She shepherds him into a sheltered cove This new born creation a mother’s love He opens his eyes and steadily breathes Will he make his migration to southern seas? I pray that his blood will not roll in the waves That a man with a trident will choose him to save From the harpoons of lust for a whale’s force of life Just cos they can in this blood bath on ice The breath of the ocean is calling out, calling out… If the whales stop breathing there will be no doubt The winds will stop blowing when the food chain runs out The breath of a whale is the breath of us all If the ocean is dead than we can’t hear its call The death of the ocean is calling out calling out The death of the ocean, the time is now, time is now The breath of the ocean she’s calling out, calling out… The breath, the breath, the breath…

Stare into the ocean and what will you find: candy-shop colours enchanting your mind, scallops and sea-stars, nautilus swirls, where tender anemones blush and unfurl? You see only profits, Omega 3 oil, and dredgers and trawlers to bring in the spoil. When I see the ocean, I think of a land we’ve pillaged before we can half understand its glories and secrets, its music, its tides, inscrutable depths where the albatross glides. My dreams turn to nightmares: a whole world bereft when dredgers and trawlers are all we have left. Stare into the ocean – here, take my hand – don’t look with delusions borne of dry land: look with the eyes of a seal or a whale, dream with the gannet, be gripped by the gale, shearwaters swooping out over the Sound: your dredgers and trawlers all scuttled and drowned.

Realm of refracted light; underworld of tides and bright tentacles; kingdom of cadmiums and amaranths; cleft of scuttlings and quiet snarings; warm channel of slops, gluts, bubbling effusions, feathered bloomings of stings and gills: I sink eager fingers in, heedless probes of pallid flesh groping down, blindly to the pincering-place.

You cluster in the sea-grass, your raft a cloud of froth. Your mantles formed the spiral; the ocean brought you forth, and apex-down you’re bobbing, a bauble in the foam, the sand your desolation, the turquoise sea your home. But now your shells are bleaching; you shatter on the strand, or break as I am walking, too brittle for my hand, yet shell, you are my altar – by you I bend my knee – a talisman of water, a violet of the sea.

Webs of sunlight span the sand and wash about her form where the slope grows shallow and the water’s calm and warm. Although he’s still inside her womb, curled into a ring, the little dolphin’s heart will leap to hear his mother sing, and when by night her child is born in some secret place, he knows her voice already before he sees her face. All the family gather round: sisters, aunts and daughters, while her baby learns to breathe with blowhole out of water. At first, his swim is wobbly, but soon, he likes to clown, bounce around from wave to wave, or chase fish upside-down. When a shark comes prowling, the whole pod interposes, and now it’s driven far away they prod him with their noses. They teach the little one to fish, and how to surf the swell, and sometimes play with bubbles above the sand and shell. Sometimes, when the world’s too big, her touch is loving silk. Soon he arches long and lithe, nurtured by her milk, so when he’s just as big as them, although the wind may squall, his mother knows he’s ever near; she only has to call.

They tried to hide it from the world with barbed wire and lies: a cove of horrors slick with death where all compassion dies, where dolphins herded from the wild are meshed by nets of hate, imprisoned overnight, and each knows all too well his fate: to writhe and skitter, drown in blood, and watch, as he is dying, his mother and his children too impaled on spears and sighing. “A dolphin’s nothing special,” say the torturers who gloat and hook the murdered carcasses and drag them to the boat, while other dolphins wait and mourn too stricken to be fleeing, and I can only feel ashamed to be a human being. They tried to hide it from the world, but now, the world must face this blister on humanity or cower in disgrace, and we must end the slaughter now. When any dolphin dies, the human race has killed something more noble and more wise.

The ice and sea are tinted rose. The orca arcs; her spout is steam in open pools between the floes where mirrored waters glint and gleam. Her fin stands upright like a sail; her eye blinks near a patch of white. She weathers any ocean gale; she tilts her pale chin to the light, and where the ice, afloat like snow slides from her sleek and curving form, she slaps her flukes, and turns to go and sets her course for waters warm. High rocks and penguins standing tall; she leaves the Falklands in her trail. The pod swim closely through the squall – the loving family of the whale – till palm trees fledge the distant shore, and warmth is bathing her in joy, out where the albatrosses soar she spy-hops, bobbing like a buoy. Five thousand miles the orca swims, from pole to tropic and back home. We’ve no knowledge of her whims or what compels her so to roam. So would you steal her from her kin, conspire to cage her in a pool? You watch her sigh, her drooping fin, and have no notion this is cruel? The tie that binds her is the sea; above, the sky – beneath, the sand. She swims the trade-winds of the free; her only boundary is the land. The ice and sea are tinted rose. The orca arcs; her spout is steam in open pools between the floes where mirrored waters glint and gleam.

My mother left home when I was but ten Forsaking forever the discourse of men; For the call of the sea she turned tail to the land, And left me to weep in my web-fingered hands. Where the white horses surge, my father looked out, And into the wind, in vain did he shout, Though nothing returned but the swell of the sea And the sound of the seagulls a-calling for me. By night and by day I have wandered the strand, My face turned to seaward, my back turned to land, Her song on my lips and her blood in my heart, And I feel the sweet urging that bade her depart. So naked I’ll slip out, far into the sea, And I’ll touch not the land until death sets me free; I’ll look back on my father, the cliffs and the town And I’ll seek my dear mother once more ‘ere I drown.

Velvet and lithe, she spies a ship’s light A sailor is yearning to make her his wife She dives down and hides beneath swelling tides For should he entrap her on his fisher’s line He’ll drag her ashore upon the dry sand And make her a home on a crag of dry land Stripped of her kin, torn from her skin She’ll fret and she’ll cry, look outward and sigh And dream of her freedom in ocean’s sublime Her beauty’s a curse, they all want her purse Of riches that reach way day down deep in the earth The ocean’s her home, the seal is her man The whale her scholar, the dolphin her friend Selkie Song. Selkie Song. So leave her to be, under the sea The Selkie was born here to swim wild and free She moves with the tides, she’s nobody’s bride A man of the land cannot offer his hand For he has nothing she ever needs Her hair floating round, she dare make no sound For if she should sing it might turn him around His ship and its crew sail into the moon She lets out a sigh; she is free one more night To weave and to wade in the blues and the jades of the sea Selkie Song. Selkie Song.

Down to the sand, the dolphins will swim, blowing out bubble-rings, all on a whim, they bite them and snip them, tweak with their noses, watching them rise in quizzical poses, and one swims straight through, then bobs like a buoy, laughing because he has made his own toy. He flits and he skims and he threshes his tail: a bubble of joy from the lungs of a whale. Just off a harbour a-shimmer with fish, the humpbacks’ great flukes will flurry and swish, herding and swirling the shoal into spinning. One whale swims under, her powerful squealing driving them upwards; another one weaves a fine web of bubbles which glisters and wreathes. They lurch in and swallow, each threshing her tail: bubbles of cleverness blown by a whale. Far out to windward, the humpbacks draw in near to the lady-friend each hopes to win, they’re rolling and tumbling, all full of bluster summoning all of the brawn they can muster, yet still getting nowhere for all of their troubles: wrapped in a curtain of amorous bubbles, she’s found him already, and threshes her tail: bubbles of love from the lungs of a whale.

They rise to the surface, or we would not know that something is burgeoning, fathoms below: sperm whales and orcas, the lunging great white. They arch and they plunge, as into the night, wrestling with wide-eyed and tentacled foes, deep in the darkness, where rich water flows: a canyon of mystery, place of rebirth, where whale-breath and plankton replenish the Earth, and albatross, petrels and shearwaters soar, for surface and sky and deep ocean floor are interconnected – and yet, here they come, and all they can see is the bountiful sum destroying this place might put in the bank. “You fear for the fish? They’ll be fine in a tank. We’ve no time for orcas; we’re here for the spoil. A sperm-whale’s just blubber – now, give us the oil.” Will you stand by and let them plant rigs in the sea, drilling and spilling where humpbacks swim free, polluting the water with oil slicks and noise: a vicious invader who rapes and destroys, or will you rise up when they come to “explore” and call it an act of unjustified war, and shout ‘til it penetrates heavens above, “You shall not destroy all this beauty we love: slink back to your office and leave to the whales the joy of the swell and the brisk ocean gales. Return to the city; it’s where you belong - and leave the wild sea to the whale and his song”?

Ripple-dapples on their skins, the whales sing to each other, all the daughters and the sons milling round their mother. They roll and rest and loaf around and whistle in fair weather; the depths reflect the deep blue sound of echoes underwater. They stretch out in a chorus line and swim towards the bay; they herd the fish, and in they lunge snapping up their prey – or in a sprint, they chase the squid, their backs in graceful arches, revelling in stealth and speed where sunlight barely reaches. And now the surface seethes and churns with fins of joyful whales, pulsing sounds and falling tones and shocks of slapping tails. They nudge each other and cajole, and each one loves his neighbour; around the ancient mother whale the younger ones seek harbour. Yet every year the grind is here beneath the leaden skies; the killers never seem to hear, the shrills and plaintive cries. The water is a sluice of gore, the tide a bloody slop, and all of nature must implore and scream for this to stop: the time must come when whales swim by fjords without fearing, and only tones of harmony will float within their hearing. With ripple-dapples on their skins, the whales sing to each other, all the daughters and the sons milling round their mother.

I comb the beach for relics of a grisly trade: the remains of whales, bone worn to the trabecular, ocean-rounded, like petrified sponge. Humpbacks were hauled in here, and sperm whales from beyond the continental shelf: murdered, factoried, flensed and rendered. Here the sea would churn with blood, the strand clotted with it; great steel boilers bilged out the stench of flesh and blubber. Now, the dry-docked whale-chaser lies stranded, its belly exposed, the rudder like a flailing tail, the harpoons rust-blunted, and the spent breakers sigh their way to land. Gulls and oystercatchers paddle the littoral and only sun pinks sand and sea.

I’m master of a whaling boat, and I’ve seen seas so high you could not tell the fore from aft, or water from the sky. I live with what I see and do, all washed down with a dram; an ogre and a bastard – that’s what you think I am. You know my soul is stained with blood, the reddest thing afloat; between the whale and this harpoon, you steer your rubber boat. You think a Dutchman kills a Sperm the way he nets a cod, but I have looked on dying whales and seen the eye of God. A clean kill on a moving ship, the whale on a swell: you’d find it easier to shoot an angel down from hell. You’ll never do it with one blow: you’ll see him thresh and flail, for he dies hard, I tell you true – there’s wisdom in that whale. I’ve led you on a merry dance, but something in me changed, and on the chaser of my heart, the rudder’s rearranged. I’m guilty for the whales I’ve killed, and history is tough, but in the offing, I can see, the water’s getting rough: our piracy got out of hand; we thought we ruled the waves, but the sea will smash the stones and wash away our graves. No more can man and ocean fight, as in the days of sail, and if I have to learn a thing, I’ll learn it from a whale. So come and drink a dram with me, down at the White Star; I’m done with old brutalities – I wear them like a scar. That eye of God is on me now; its force is like a gale. Forgive me – and I know you’ll need compassion like a whale.

I lie on the beach and look out to the reef where the sea-dragon slinks, every fin like a leaf, out through the crevices, over the brink of rocks Corallina has crusted in pink, and the thought of it rends me and blinds me with tears: will his ocean be empty in thirty-three years? On the island, the sea-lion blinks at the sky as the wind starts to rise and the spume splashes high; her face is all whiskers, her eyes wide and meek, and fed with bright fish, she is frolicsome, sleek, as she slips into water, dives, reappears, but where will she be in thirty-three years? And the shark and the orca, the pod of grey whales, the delicate nautilus riding the gales, the limpets and sea-stars, the marlins, the birds, the luminous plankton: nothing but words from a world long forgotten, a maelstrom of fears that whirls and consumes us in thirty-three years. But the trident is rising, the crook's set to save from this bleak desolation, this watery grave, if you give but a moment for searching your soul and kill your addiction to oil and coal and bury your nets, your long lines and spears for an ocean still living in thirty-three years.

The breath of the ocean cavorts in the waves: it never has wars, it never keeps slaves, it never builds engines that gutter with smoke, without it we founder, without it we choke. The breath of the ocean is not of our kind – it reaches a depth that surpasses our mind it sighed before humans invented the sail – the breath of the ocean: the spout of a whale. The breath of the ocean’s hauled up on the strand as blood fills the water and shame fills the land, the mother lies dying alongside her child, the sand of the Faroes is red and defiled, and even the children wade through the flood, innocence drowning in puddles of blood. They call this tradition: this pillage and spoil – my own blood is churning; the tide starts to boil. The breath of the ocean is smothered by man: some vile millionaire who lives in Japan, who orders these killings and then takes his seat to gorge his own blubber on fresh-murdered meat. But these are our friends, say the men in their ties: we sell them more gas – another whale dies – They dare call this science – this orgy of death – and all of us lose in the struggle for breath. The breath of the ocean is stifled each day compassionate souls turn their faces away. We know this is murder; we shrug and we sigh while scoundrels in government turn a blind eye. You can’t save a whale with some law in a book, so take up the trident, grab hold of the crook. You won’t clear your conscience, your breath won’t be free ‘til every last whale ship sinks under the sea. The breath of the ocean does not belong to humans at all. It sings its own song of depths we can’t fathom, of oceans sublime, and we stand convicted of hideous crime: intelligence, blessedness, flensed on the deck of a shipful of horrors that should be a wreck the twentieth century scuttled for good, but still the same warnings are not understood: The breath of the ocean’s like sea and like sky: your own lungs must breathe it; without it, you die.