On the menopause of whales

(This is a weird form poem, almost but not quite a prose poem, inspired by the ground-breaking theoretical work being done by my close friend Emily, who is a rising star in the literary and cultural theory world and who I am enormously proud of).

On the menopause of whales 

did you know, she said, that some whales go through the menopause too? orcas and so on, the ones with teeth. only humans and toothed whales and chimps, that's all, and I said no, no I didn't know that, I didn't know that any other species stuttered and faltered and plunged into the twilight the way we do

the way I am doing

with a body that tries and tries to bleed every month but only sometimes, only fewer times than sometimes, succeeds

with a mind and a heart and many sets of pyjamas drenched with a misery that has no name and has many names 

my daughter says they learned in biology that menopause is a rare and strange evolution, counter-intuitive and seemingly aberrant, because breeding from first maturity for your whole lifespan is what life seems to want for those who must pass on their genes through birthing instead of seeding, to maximise the number of offspring

to paper the world with your little fluttering exclamations to the future

but orca whales and chimpanzees and we, for us, the path is different; a full third of our lives beyond the reach of conceiving and childbearing, suspended in a half-light beyond the wax and wane of the body, beyond the borders of what it means to carry a uterus in your abdomen and in your soul

we the few, amongst the teeming multitudes of this earth, letting go of the fertility of our bodies long before we let go of life, and no one can say for certain why

perhaps it's so we can nurture our daughters' daughters and the sons of our sons, holding them soft in a grandparent's embrace, so our genes may reach forward, a shout against oblivion; or perhaps it's so we don't create more children to compete with our children's children, in a world where all living is a contest and a fight; perhaps it is so we can live longer, freed from the stunning gravity and constant risk of reproduction  

perhaps it is so we can come into our wisdom, the crone stretching fingers against eternity as the sky grows darker

orca grandmothers lead their pods, especially in times of danger; they are the lodestar and the voice that steadies against travail and fear, and keeps the pod joined and moving against that which harms, there in the wide deep ocean

and I wonder if they mourn for their open wombs, as we do
as I do

or if they, instead, turn their thoughts to who they can become, ageing against the waves
if there is power in that, as well as grief
if there is something gained for all that loss

for all that our bodies once did and now do not 
the moon no longer tugging at our abdomens
the life in our veins no longer infinite and surging

the stars in the sky seeming closer, now
cousins in waiting for the cells of our bodies

and I, who have wasted days and months and years denying what I could be
maybe can learn to waste no more time

because time is a closed loop, now;
and the night is drawing in.