Ambition by Tess Gallagher

Ambition

 

We had our heads down

baiting hooks—three wild salmon

already turned back that morning

for the in-season hatchery silvers

now out there somewhere

counting their luck—when

under our small boat the sea

gave a roll like a giant turning over

 

in sleep, lifting us so high I thought

an ocean liner or freighter had

slipped up on us, the sudden heft

of its bow-wave, our matchstick toss

to depth we’d taken

for granted in order to venture there

at all. But when I looked up expecting

collision, the quash of water from their

 

blowholes pushed to air in unison,

a pair of gray whales not two hundred

yards away: “Look up!” I shouted so you

didn’t miss the fear-banishing

of their passage that made

nothing of us. Not even death could touch

any mind of us. It was all beauty and

mystery, the kind that picks you up

 

effortlessly and darts through you

for just those moments

you aren’t even there. Held that way

and their tons-weight bodies plunged

silently under again, I turned for proof

to you, but the clarity was passing through

as a swell under us again and the sky of the sea

set us down like a toy.

 

And that’s the way it was, and it wasn’t

any other way—just looking at each other,

helpless one thought and huge with power

the next. We baited up,

dropped our herring into slack water—

two ghosts fishing for anything but whales.