Whalers called their songs the dark liturgy of Lucifer, the grunts and groans of his aggrieved, fallen angels, echoing through the scalloped chambers of the ships.
Off Hawaii, long ago, I first heard them cry from their cathedral in the deep.
The songs bring their solitary kind together.
And together the sonic pods become acrobats, cavorting, leaping free and clear-eyed, high into the air, shaking barnacles from mottled snouts.
At times the placid humpbacks will float quietly on the smooth surface of a night sea.
Do you suppose the whales are gazing at the stars, the galaxies spinning above them in cosmic emptiness?