Feeding the Whales

 

It began in my early-morning dreams but was quickly rising to the surface.  What sounded to me like the distant song of whales turned out to be the squeaky brakes of the trash truck making its rounds through the neighborhood.  Still groggy, I tried to remember if I had, the night before, put the cans out at the curb.

As I lay there, I imagined myself feeding the whales, their appetite enormous.  Trash cans full of krill, fish, zooplankton, algae, and phytoplankton being dumped into their awaiting mouths.  How was I to keep up?  Each one fighting for the position right in front of me.  I could hear the empty cans of whole kernel corn clinking as they fell.  The colorful wrappers catching the morning light, toothpaste tubes squeezed beyond recognition, used Kleenex and cardboard rolls from toilet paper, hamburger packaging, complete with cellophane and label wadded into the now dried blood from a process I never cared to see.

Then I noticed I didn’t hear them anymore.  Their songs drifting with the current of the neighborhood streets.  I rolled over, knowing there was a well fed pod somewhere deep beyond the depths of my pillow.