Moving to a New Classroom

That slick envelope 
of developed film 
is tumbled in a storage closet 
next to old seating charts 
and a stale granola bar in foil.

In one of the frames, 
faces are locked 
in astonishment. 
Having sighted a Killer Whale, 
Neah Bay June 2004 
is written on the back of the photograph
in the tender filigree of eighth-grade cursive.

My first year teaching,
on a field-trip nature hike,
I pointed down
between two cedar-spiked sea stacks.
An orca’s black-and-white silhouette 
sashayed across the waves, 
looking buoyant and playful
as a toddler in bathwater.

Whale-skin erudition;
mathematical wonder 
of the united gaze.
Juvenile orca 
floating under Cape Flattery.