Friday
Looking out over the Atlantic blue, I watch the water’s surface rise and sink, peak and crest in the mildest seascape. With a focused eye I can discern rolls of water that might, were shoreline nearby, become waves; but here they amount to nothing more than hillocks in a watery terrain.
Here and there a peaking wave folds over itself, or two waves at varied courses collide with a gentle splash. When this happens, the deep blue water is transformed just there to white, a foam that slides on the surface, disperses and dissolves. Inasmuch as this happens close to the ship, I am not deceived. But occasionally, seeing the white foam at a distance, I am momentarily hopeful to have seen a breaching whale. I am always wrong.
On Wednesday late afternoon the ship left Halifax and headed south. The setting sunlight poured into our starboard side, and I sat at a table on the Lido deck, looking out at the green water and the glowing yellow sky.
Two crew members sat at a table near the window, talking quietly on their break. Suddenly one sat up straighter, then both men leaned forward, eyes fixed on the water. I looked and saw it too: a crest of white on the water’s surface, where something had broken through and sunk again. But I knew it was a whale this time, because over that place a cloud of spray drifted for a moment– a whale’s sigh at the surface of the water. I watched, holding my breath, and saw it happen a time or two more, though the whale never really made more of an appearance.
How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number–
living things both large and small.
There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which you
formed to frolic there.
Psalm 104: 24-26
