Improv/Imitation 2, Week 9

"The tongue of a blue whale weighs
as much as an elephant,"
but nothing weighs as much as a blue
whale that has swallowed ten ships,
including that rusted plank that became
of Odysseus's ship and men, trying like
a child rushing through hard water
to return to Ithaca.
What if no one was waiting when he got
back to that island of which he was once
king, no one in all of the palace or town
below it to greet him with a hero's
welcome, especially not the son he
abandoned, whose own sailings took
him to the city of Sparta, where the 300--
or was it 30,000--tried yet again to defeat
their common enemy. No enemy is common.
They all take what is not theirs and streak
the sky with wedded bands of smoke and fire
that pound onto the ground with the force
of the elephants that Hannibal rode into
his greatest battles, winning with their
might. But he may not have won if the
enemy, the uncommon enemy, had ridden
on blue whales, whose tongues weigh
as much as an elephant.