the kite and the whale

Reading “The Kite” by Marcella Durand. Feeling resistance (not uncommon for me encountering a poem).

The parentheticals are distracting, I’m wondering why use them, what are they for.

I can’t stop thinking about Moby Dick, which may be the definitive ecopoem. It’s because the poem’s central image is the sea and the poem ends with three-and-a-half quatrains about oil.

In ringing sea is
(owned) oil:

I had an idea for a website, never or not yet realized, to be called Letters to Melville. I wanted to inform him about the current oil culture. Compare and contrast fossil fuels with cetacean fuels. Moby Dick is a horrifying book and seems very current. I keep thinking about the giant stinking corpse of the whale hanging off the side of the ship. And then, in the most lyrical passage I have ever read, about the whale nursery.

So I’m distracted reading “The Kite.” The kite seems a too-small metaphor to enter this topic, but I can identify as a wee buffeted kite (eye) on the shore, not knowing what to make of it.