The sun has set on Santa Barbara

and offshore oil rigs at the horizon

are lit up like a row of Christmas trees,

each platform out there mining the seabed

for countless giga-Joules of energy.

Below them, marine life tries to survive,

though tankers threaten whales’ safe passage:

too many of their giant carcasses –

crushed by hull, disfigured by propellor –

have fallen to the deep or washed on land.

Even so, petrels dart among the waves.

Murres dive where anchovies group near the surface.

Sea lions pick starfish off the pilings.

Fathoms down, sharks rove and crabs meander.

Squid luminesce with brilliant trickery.

Hagfish scavenge dead whales at the bottom.

From under the silt, crude oil siphoned up

powers commerce, holiday travel, sport.

To say the ocean is agnostic to this

would be untrue. No, whales are patient

until the day when those rigs and tankers

crumble, capsize, then sink to the abyss –

becoming, perhaps, new habitats

for octopus, anemone, oyster.

In the fullness of time, centuries later,

waters again will roil with their great bodies:

their feeding, their mating, their migrations.