To Be Great, Be A Whale

—misheard line from a poem by Fernando Pessoa

Be a blue whale with a heart the size of a room.
Be that wet and that alone wherever you go.
Look out through watery, sad-seeming eyes
to watch even the smallest forms of life float by.
Be more at home the deeper and farther out you swim.
Let few see you. Let them wonder.
Prize barnacles, though they are rough, and some say, ugly.
Take note of what is right and true about the world there.
Let krill be all that you eat, and let it be plenty.
Persist, though much about it is difficult,
just as an iceberg rises anyway where in ten years
there will be no more icebergs.

Posted by kind permission of the poet.

Listen to the poet, Holly Wren Spaulding, read this poem: