Hi there,
This is Stephen.
Just before I start tonight,
I like to tell people these days that I'm a real human being.
This is my work and my art,
And my voice is completely human.
And a lot of love and patience and time and care goes into creating these stories.
And with that,
Hello my friend.
Welcome to your sleep story.
My name is Stephen Dalton.
Storyteller,
And it's my grace privilege to be the voice that you listen to.
As you go to sleep tonight.
Tonight's story is about a whale.
A whale called Old Moonback.
Did you know that when whales go to sleep,
Only half of them sleeps.
Was this real?
Has been looking after ships on the ocean for many years.
And brings a great calm with him.
And maybe.
After 200 years.
It's time for old moon back.
To fully fall asleep.
Keep listening to find out if he does.
But first,
Let's do the relaxation session,
Which will take a few minutes before tonight's sleep story.
I'm going to count down from 10 to 1.
And as I do,
Allow yourself to let go more and more.
Feel the support.
Of the bed beneath you.
Or the floor.
Or whatever you lie upon tonight.
Beneath all of that.
Feel the support.
Of the Earth.
Our home.
Constant support.
And as you become aware of that.
Grounding.
Calming support.
See if you can.
Let go a little more now.
Just ease into this moment.
A little more now.
Nein.
You.
Are safe.
Tonight.
Allow my voice.
To be a friend.
To be an anchor of safety.
Knows this.
My voice will never take you to anywhere unsafe.
It will only ever take you to safe.
Places.
Places of coziness and comfort.
Places where stories are told.
With a spirit of kindness.
And human understanding.
And allow that fact.
To enable you.
To just Be here.
And listen.
And move closer and closer to sleep.
Become aware of your body now.
Feel into your body.
Where are you holding tension?
Where do you perhaps feel pain?
Maybe it's in your feet?
Maybe in your lower legs?
Your size.
Oops.
Your belly.
Your chest.
Goodbye.
Maybe your neck.
Your shoulders.
Your arms urance.
Or maybe you're like me.
Do you hold tension in your face?
Or in the top of your head.
Wherever you're holding tension.
Wherever you're feeling pain,
If you are.
See if becoming aware of it.
And help ease it a little.
Seven.
The day.
Is.
Whatever has been.
Has been.
Whatever will be.
Will be.
Whatever thoughts you might be having.
About the future or the past.
Know this.
Neither of those places exists.
Or that you have.
Is now.
Is this moment.
So choose to be kind to yourself in this moment.
And begin to let go.
If a sword arrives.
Don't fight it.
Welcome it.
It is a part of being human.
See it for what it is.
A thought.
Then don't follow it.
Let it flows away.
Like leaves floating away on a moonlit river.
Or a cloud.
Passing by.
Through a starlit sky.
6.
Peace.
Lives within you.
I promise you it does.
It is always there.
It is always just.
Waiting to be found.
Wasting.
To be felt.
So see if you can find that peace tonight.
Ask yourself.
Where does it live within me?
Sometimes I think I find it in my chest.
Sometimes in my head.
When you find it.
It can have an immediate effect on your whole body.
Sometimes it can be found.
Through a simple,
Deep breath.
Let's take one now together.
Breathe in through your nose.
And out through your mouth.
Maybe you've found your peace.
Or maybe you're on the way to.
Don't force it.
It will come.
If it hasn't already.
Five.
This is your moment.
This is your time.
I love that fact.
To enable you.
To let go completely.
You have nowhere to be.
Nowhere to go.
Allow yourself to indulge in this moment.
Perhaps allow a little gratitude now.
Gratitude.
For the simple things.
With the ones who love you.
And who you love.
For the roof over your head tonight.
With the breath in your body.
With the ability to lie here tonight.
And listen to a sleep story.
Begin to engage with your imagination now.
Begin to see the ocean.
And a calm night.
The water hardly moves.
The moon hangs low below it.
And there.
Is a wooden ship.
And next to it.
Agree?
Friendly.
Gentle.
Will.
A sleepy whale.
That you are soon to hear about.
Checking in with your body one more time now.
Your body has worked hard for you today.
It's time to give it rest.
Completely letting go now.
As I tell you.
Tonight.
Sleep story.
If you have ever wondered.
What the ocean does at night.
I can tell you.
Because I.
.
.
Happen to know.
It goes to sleep.
Not all at once,
Of course.
An ocean is far too large to fall asleep all at once.
The way you or I might.
It does it the way a very old house does it.
Room by room.
Corner by corner.
The little bays nod off first.
Usually just after supper.
Their small boats tucked against their moorings.
Like children tucked against pillows.
Then the shallows go.
With all their swaying weeds and then the long green miles,
Where the fish hang perfectly still in the dark water.
Like ornaments nobody has put away.
And last of all.
Very late.
The T.
Middle of the ocean goes to sleep.
The part that is miles from anywhere.
Where the water is so deep.
And so old.
It has forgotten the names of most of the ships.
That have ever crossed it.
The waves do keep going all night,
I should say.
But they stop meaning anything by it.
A daytime wave is going somewhere.
A night time wave.
Is just turning over in bed.
And the sound changes too.
You would have to be very far out to hear it.
Farther than most people ever go.
At night.
The whole enormous ocean.
Makes one.
Long.
Slow.
Endless sound.
The same sound in the north.
As in the South.
And if you listen to it properly.
And tonight.
You and I are going to listen to it properly.
It is unmistakably a lullaby.
It has no words.
It is never needed,
Any.
But if it did have words.
.
.
They would be the three soft words that every sea has said.
To every shore.
Since the very beginning.
Over and over.
All night long.
There.
There.
There.
In the middle of all this sleeping water.
On the particular nice I want to tell you about.
There was a moon.
It was an enormous moon.
Round.
Goal.
And low.
The sort of moon that seems to have come down.
Especially to have a closer look at something.
And it hung above one particular patch of ocean.
Very far from land.
Were two remarkable things.
Were floating side by side in the dark.
One of them.
Was a little wooden ship.
And the other one.
Was the sleepiest will.
In the world.
Every ocean has its whales.
And every whale is somebody.
But the whale in this story was somebody in particular.
The sailors called him.
Old Moonback Nobody knew what the other whales called him.
Because Whales say their names very slowly.
Over several evenings.
And no sailor.
Had ever managed to stay awake for all of it.
But old Moonbeck He was on every ship in that ocean.
And had been.
For longer than anyone could properly say.
Grandfathers had heard about him from their grandfathers,
Who had claimed,
In that comfortable way grandfathers have,
That he was already old when they were boys.
And already enormous.
And all ready.
Very.
Very sleepy.
He was the largest whale on the whole ocean.
I could tell you how large in feet and in tons,
But numbers are wide awake things.
And we are not going to bother with them tonight.
I will only say that when Old Moonback rose to the surface.
It was less like an animal coming up.
And more like a gentle island arriving.
An island that breathed.
And that when the moonlight settled on his great wet back,
Which it always did.
The moment he surfaced.
The way a cat settles instantly.
On the one newspaper you were reading.
Is back.
Sean Silver from one end to the other.
That is how he got the name.
On bright nights he looked like a long piece of the moon.
That had come loose and learned to swim.
He was old.
And he was first.
And he was kind.
And he was?
And I want to be quite accurate about this.
The sleepiest creature.
The sea has ever produced.
Everything about him was slow.
And heavy.
Answer.
Is great eyelids.
Came down like evening.
Is voice.
And the rare occasions he used it.
Was so.
Low.
And so.
.
.
Slow.
That is single.
Hello.
Took the better part of an hour.
And by the end of it the fish who had asked how he was doing.
Had usually nodded off against his side.
Which he never minded.
Even his heartbeat was a sleepy thing.
It bet the way a very patient person Knocks on a door they are happy to wait outside of.
And a long velvet pause.
Boom again.
Smawfish liked to drift close to him at night,
Just to feel it.
It was the best metronome for sleeping.
The ocean hurt.
But here is the strange thing about old Moonback.
And it is the whole reason for this story.
So I shall say it carefully.
The sleepiest,
Wail in the world.
Had never once been.
Entirely asleep.
You see,
Whales sleep in a most peculiar way.
And this part,
I promise you,
Is perfectly true.
A whale cannot switch itself off all at once the way you can.
A whale must keep half of itself awake to remember to breathe and to keep one eye on the wide dark water.
And so,
Whales sleep one half at a time.
The left half of Old Moonback.
Would sleep.
While the right half kept watch.
And then.
.
.
Somewhere in the smallest hours.
The two halves would change places.
Quietly.
Like sentries who are fond of each other.
And the right half would sleep.
While the left half watched the stars.
It worked perfectly well.
It had worked perfectly well for two hundred years.
But it did mean that Old Moonback had only ever dreamed.
Half a dream at a time.
He had hundreds of years of half-dreams.
He had the first half of a dream about a warm,
Green bay.
And no idea how it ended.
He had the second half of a dream about singing with his mother.
And no idea how it began.
His dreams were like a library.
In which every book was missing.
Either its first pages.
.
.
Where it's less.
And though he was too patient and too polite a whale ever to complain about it,
There was.
In the deepest part of him.
Down below the part that the fish could feel booming.
One.
Long.
Quiet wish.
Just once.
He would have liked to sleep.
All the way through.
Both halves at once.
Both eyes closed.
One whole dream.
With a beginning and a middle and an end.
The kind everyone else on the ocean got every single night.
And never even sought to be grateful for.
That's all.
That was the entire wish.
He had never told anyone.
Because a whale's telling takes several evenings.
And it seemed a lot of trouble for such a small thing.
But the moon knew.
The moon has been watching whales sleep in halves for a very long time.
And she misses nothing that shines on water.
You might think that a creature who had never properly slept would be bitter about bedtime.
It was exactly the other way around.
Old Moonback loved sleep.
The way people who live in land love the sea.
He loved it as a beautiful country he had only ever seen half of.
And somewhere.
In his two hundred years.
He had found himself a piece of work to do.
The gentlest work on all the ocean.
And it.
Was this.
Old moon back.
Watched over sleeping ships.
It had started long ago.
More or less by accident.
Drifting one night.
With his awake calf.
He had come upon a small fishing boat.
Far from home.
Rocking in a clumsy,
Worried sort of way.
And Old Moonbuck had done the only thing he knew how to do.
Which was to rise quietly beside it.
Enormous and calm.
And simply be there.
His great body smoothed the water.
The way a hand.
Smooth the bedsheets.
The clumsy rocking became a slow,
Deep Even rocking.
The proper kind.
The kind that boats and babies both understand.
And the fisherman inside.
Had been sleeping badly in their narrow bunk.
All sighed at the same moment.
And rolled over.
And settle.
Without one of them waking.
Away passengers in a coach.
All lean together when it turns a familiar corner.
The whale had stayed beside that little boat until the sky went pale.
Then he had sunk away.
Quiet as a sword.
Before anyone will.
And the fishermen never knew why they came home from that trip.
So rested.
And so unreasonably cheerful.
And their wives never found out either.
Though several of them asked pointed questions.
Was the first ship.
There had been thousands since.
He had watched over fishing smacks and mail packets.
Over tubby little colliers and tool-ships.
With names like.
.
.
Perseverance.
Out of Bristol.
He had watched over a lighthouse keeper's rowing boat.
Which had seemed to him hardly bigger than a leaf.
And once.
For an entire winter crossing.
Over a great passenger ship.
Full of emigrants.
Hundreds of people.
With everything they owned in bundles.
Sleeping their way toward a new country.
Nice.
After night.
Yet surfaced beside her enormous hull.
Even beside her he was bigger.
He was always bigger.
And night after night.
The seasick had stopped being seasick.
And the homesick at dreamed kind dreams.
Of the homes they were going to.
Instead of the homes they had left.
He asked for nothing back.
He was aware.
There was nothing a ship could give him.
He simply liked the sound sleeping people make.
If you have never heard it.
It is a sound somewhere between a kettle.
.
.
Just before it sings.
And a cut who has found the warm spot.
And a ship full of it.
Creaking along under the stars.
With every hammock.
Swinging the same way.
Was.
An old moonback's considered opinion.
The loveliest sound on the ocean.
And the sailors.
For their part.
Told stories about him.
In every port on that sea.
If you see a long silverback beside this ship at midnight.
They said.
Don't you dare shout.
And don't you dare point.
Just get into your bunk and close your eyes.
Because nobody sleeps deeper.
Than a man on a ship.
That old moon back has chosen.
Captains who saw him.
Wrote it in their logbooks,
In their best handwriting.
Calm night.
The whale was alongside.
All hands slept like children.
There is a captain called.
.
.
Captain Mothersoul.
Who swore that his crew went to bed at seven in the evening for a week,
On the mere rumour of him.
And in the galley of every ship on that ocean.
It was considered the worst kind of luck.
Worse than whistling.
Worse than spilling soot.
To be loud after dark.
When the whale was near.
Not because he would do anything about it.
Because it would.
Be rude.
So.
That was old Moonbeck.
The Night Watchman of the Sea.
200 years old.
Silver where the moon touched him.
Keeper of everyone's sleep but his own.
And on the nice I am telling you about.
The night with the enormous The Golden Moon.
He was making his slow way through the dark.
With his left half awake.
And his right half dozing.
Listening.
Across the miles of quiet water.
For anyone who might need him.
And someone.
She was called the Marigold.
And she was a small.
.
.
Elderly wooden ship.
Of the crooked and comfortable kind.
I want you to see her properly.
Because she deserves it.
She had too much.
And her sails were furled for the night.
Tied up in neat brown bundles.
Like fresh loaves.
Her timbers had been tarred and mended,
And tarred again for fifty years,
Until she had gone the deep brown-black colour of a violin.
And nothing on her was quite straight anymore.
Her masts leaned.
Just slightly.
Like two old friends telling secrets.
Or dead.
Rose and dip.
In little hills.
Where the planks had settled.
In a harbour full of smart new ships.
She looked like a favorite armchair that had wandered in among the furniture in a shop window.
And every sailor who had ever served on her.
That loved her.
Without being able to say exactly why.
The marigold was seventeen days out from home,
In the very widest Emptiness.
Deepest part of the ocean.
Carrying a cargo of the kind that makes a ship smell wonderful.
Barrels of apples.
And sacks of cinnamon and cloves.
And boxes and boxes of good black tea.
When the breeze moved along her deck It picked up all three Apples and spice and tea together And if you were wondering what that smells like.
.
.
It smells exactly like the inside of a grandmother's cupboard.
And there are worse things for a ship to smell of.
Miles from anywhere.
Under the stars.
Her crew was small.
Eleven souls and a cat.
And by the time the moon had climbed to its highest every single one of them.
Was asleep.
The captain was asleep in his cabin at the stern.
Sitting up in his bunk.
With his spectacles on his forehead.
And the day's chart.
Still open on his knees.
Where it gently rose and fell as he breathed The pencil still in his hand.
Even in his sleep.
He was keeping a dead reckoning of exactly where his dreams had got to.
He was an old round.
Gentle captain.
Very near the end of his last voyage.
Before retiring to a cottage he had never seen.
But had been describing to the crew for years.
And he slept.
The way old captains do.
Listening.
Even while snoring.
So that the ship was in his ears all night.
Like a wife's breathing.
The cook was asleep in the gully.
A hammock slung between a beam and a cupboard.
With his arms folded.
And an expression of great professional seriousness.
As though sleep were a soup.
That would curdle if he stopped concentrating.
Above him,
His pots and pans hung from their hooks in order of size.
Swaying altogether with the ship.
Tinging very softly now and then.
No louder than a spoon set down on a saucer.
He had left the galley fire banked low in its iron stove.
A small red heart of embers behind its little door.
And the warmth of it crept along the deck beams.
To where the watch below lay sleeping.
Which is why.
On the marigold.
The men nearest the gully.
Reset to have the finest breaths on the ship.
And bequeathed them in their wills.
The crew slept forward.
In hammocks hung close together.
Seven men swinging gently in a row.
Like seven notes of the same tune.
One of them snored on the in-breath.
Is neighbor.
By long accommodation.
Snored on the out-breath.
They had sailed together so many years,
That they had become between them.
One complete.
And rather restful sound.
And younger sailors had been known to have trouble sleeping ashore for the lack of it.
And in the smallest hammock.
Right forward.
Where the bough made its endless,
Soft shush against the water.
Slept the ship's boy.
Who is eleven.
On his first proper voyage.
With his boots set side by side beneath him.
Toes pointing home.
And in his hand.
Still.
Though he had been asleep for an hour.
A lesser from his mother.
Which he had now read so many times.
That the creases had gone soft as cloth.
It said the things that mother's letters say.
Be warm.
Be good.
Mind the cook.
We are all very proud.
In you is entirely by heart.
He held it anyway.
At sea.
Eleven is very young.
And the night is very low.
And a letter in the hand is an anchor of its own kind.
The only member of the crew awake was the helmsman.
And I will let you in on the marigold's oldest secret.
On flat,
Calm nights.
In the open ocean.
With the real lush.
And the sails asleep.
And a thousand miles of nothing on every side.
The Helmsman's Work.
Was not always.
Strictly speaking.
He was alone.
Bony,
Comfortable man.
And he had settled himself down on a coil of rope.
Beside the wheel with his pipe Out of respect for the hour.
And his chin had found his chest.
And every few minutes he raised one eyelid halfway.
Took a long look at the moon.
To make sure it was still there.
And lower it again.
Satisfied This is not good seamanship.
I am obliged to say so.
But it is very good.
Sleeping.
And no harm ever came of it on the knights that mattered,
For a reason the helmsman himself never knew.
The reason was on its way.
Down in the hole.
Among the apple barrels.
The ship's cut.
A small ginger person by the name of Biscuit.
Opened her eyes.
Cats always know first.
She flowed up the companionway like something poured out of a jug.
Across to the moonlit deck without a sound.
Leapt to the rear.
And sat very tall and very still.
Looking out at the silver water.
Her tail curled around her feet.
Her ears made two small crooked shadows on the planking.
And out of the dark.
Very slowly.
Very quietly.
Something enormous and gentle.
And silver.
Rose to the surface beside the little ship.
Breathe.
If you had been standing on the deck of the marigold that night.
This is what you would have seen.
First.
The water alongside.
Went strange.
And smooth.
The ripples flattening out.
As though someone had drawn a warm iron over them.
Then a paoness.
Came up through the deep.
Why does it matter?
Growing paler.
And wider.
Until the surface bows.
Hearted.
And shed itself in silver sheets Off the back of the rising whale.
And there be.
Was.
Old Moon back himself.
Alongside them.
So close.
And so fast.
That he blotted out the horizon.
On that side and replaced it with himself.
A long,
Shining hill of a creature.
Glistening from one end to the other.
With the light.
Of the enormous golden moon.
His breath went up into the night like a fountain of silver dust.
And hung there.
And drifted slowly away across the stars and the sound of his breathing.
That grey.
Warm,
Unhurried sigh.
The biggest sigh on the ocean.
Rolled over as a little ship.
From bow to stern.
And every sleeping soul aboard.
Heard it somewhere.
Underneath their dreams.
And every one of them.
All eleven.
Side 2.
At the same moment.
Without waking.
And settled deeper into their hammocks and their bunks.
In his cabin.
The captain's pencil slipped from his fingers.
And landed on the church.
Making a small mark in the middle of the empty ocean.
As if to say.
.
.
It happened here.
Biscuit the cat looked at the whale's eye.
The whale's eye.
The right one,
The awake one,
An eye the size of a dinner plate.
Deep and dark and fringed with soft creases,
Like a very old man's looked at Biscuit.
Nothing was said.
Everything was understood.
Cats and whales have this in common.
They consider most conversation unnecessary.
And all introductions.
Vulgar.
Biscuit blinked once.
Slowly.
Which among cats is a great courtesy.
And the whale lowered his eyelid once.
Slowly.
In return.
And the treaty was complete.
You keep your small watch.
I shall keep my large one.
And between us.
This ship will be the best guarded bet.
The whole dark.
See.
Biscuit yawned.
Stepped down from the rail.
Curled himself on the warm planking above the gully stove.
And went to sleep with one ear still up.
And Old Moonback arranged himself alongside the marigold for the night.
He did this with enormous care.
A whale of his size.
Cannot simply flop down next to a small elderly wooden ship.
It would be like an elephant getting into bed with a teacup.
Became close.
But not too close.
Have the whale's wits of her sight.
And matched himself to her drift so exactly.
That the sea between them.
Went as smooth as the water in a saucer.
His stillness spread outward from him,
Like warmth from a stove.
The waves that came towards the marigold.
From the ocean.
Met the whale first.
And walked over him.
And arrived on the other side.
Too sleepy to bother anyone.
And the little ship's rocking slowed.
And deepened and settled.
Into the good kind.
The kind that is not going anywhere.
The kind.
The cradle knows.
Her old timber has felt the difference at once.
O'er ships creak at night.
But there are two kinds of creaking.
The fretful kind.
When a ship is working and worrying at her seams.
And the settling kind.
Which is the sound of wood.
Being allowed to rest.
By one.
Beam.
I beam.
The marigold's creaks changed from the first kind.
To the second.
Until the whole ship was making the sound.
Of a large old dog.
Turning three times in its basket.
And lying down at last.
With its chin on its paws.
The moon came lower.
To see better.
I told you it was that sort of moon.
And there they floated.
The two of them.
Side by side.
In the middle of the widest,
Emptiest deepest part of the ocean.
The smallest.
Crocodus.
Sweetest smelling ship on the sea.
With her one amber lantern.
Glowing at the stern.
And one small portal.
Glowing gold.
Down near the waterline.
The gully embers kept their warmth all night.
And beside her.
Dwarfinger.
Guarding her.
The Great Silver Whale.
With the moonlight.
Lying along his back.
Like a path you could walk on.
All the way up.
To the edge of the night.
From very far above.
From where the stars were.
They would have looked like a mother and child.
Asleep.
And the same.
Enormous blue bed.
Now it was deep.
Middle of the night.
The hour with no name.
And Old Moon back.
Lay beside the marigold.
And did what he always did.
Be listened.
This was the part of his work he loved best of all.
Every sleeping ship.
Makes its own music.
And after two hundred years.
.
.
And use them all.
The way you know the breathing of everyone.
Who lives in your house.
And the miracle.
He decided.
Very early on that night.
Was the loveliest sounding ship.
He had ever kept watch over.
She was so old.
So wooden.
And so thoroughly loved.
That she had stopped being a thing.
And become a creature.
And she slept like one.
He listened to her rigging.
Which hummed one long soft note.
Whenever the night air moves.
A note too low for waking ears.
That went wandering up the masts.
And along every rope and down again.
Like a mother.
Humming with her mouth closed in a dark hallway.
He listened to her howl.
The gentle glug and shush of water.
Along fifty-year-old Plankett.
Which is the sound a ship makes.
When she is telling the sea about her day.
And to the sea.
Answering underneath her.
Patient as ever.
There.
There.
There.
He listened to the pots and pans above the cook.
Swinging all together.
Sing.
And long silence.
Ting.
No louder than a music box.
Heard from another room.
He listened to the seven hammocks swinging.
Seven slow pendulums.
All keeping the same time.
The two old sailors.
Snoring their shared snore.
And death Question.
And denser.
The most companionable sound in the world He listened to the captain's chart.
Rising and falling on the captain's round stomach.
Paper breathing.
On top of breathing.
He listened to the ship's buoy murmur once in his sleep.
From the very front of the ship.
At a frightened moment.
The other kind.
The whale had heard ten thousand sleepers.
To new every dialect of dreaming.
And this was a boy dreaming of home.
With his mother's letter in his hand.
A small warm mutter.
Like a bird shifting on its perch.
And then the lungs.
Easy breathing again.
In time.
Though the boy would never know it.
With the swing of the pots.
And the snore of the old sailors.
And the hum of the raking.
And the slow,
Silver breathing.
Of the whale alongside.
Because by this hour of the night The whole ship had fallen into one.
Single rhythm.
As sleeping households do.
And the whale had fallen into it too.
And it was the rhythm of the sea itself.
Which is the rhythm everyone on earth slept to.
Before they were born.
The moonlight.
Lay on the water.
The lantern.
Glowed at the stern.
It's a little portal.
Glowed gold above the waterline.
And something began to happen to old Moonback.
That had not happened in two.
Hundred years.
Both of his halves.
Grew sleepy at the same time.
It was the ship that did it.
He was quite sure of that afterwards.
Insofar as he was ever sure of anything again that night.
200 years of watching.
And no ship had ever sounded like this one.
The music of her.
Was so complete.
So soft So,
Finish.
That is.
Awake.
Beautiful,
Careful.
Watching her for you.
The half that had kept its eye open through two centuries of night.
Began.
Very slowly.
To forget what it was supposed to be doing.
The watching have listened to the hammocks.
The watching have listened.
To the wrecking.
The watching have heard the sea saying,
There,
There,
There.
Underneath the old brown hull.
And so,
In this slow,
Deep way.
That whales think.
There.
And his great right eye.
The awake one.
The one the size of a dinner plate.
Began.
Just barely.
Flows.
Halfway down.
It's stuck.
200 years of habit.
Stopped it.
Someone must watch.
Sheds the habit.
It was an old habit and it meant well.
Someone always watches.
The sea is why.
The night is long.
Chips are small.
Someone must keep the watch.
And the someone is you.
Old well.
It has always been with you.
And it was.
At exactly that moment.
On the smooth black water.
Between the whale.
And the ship.
That the moon laid down her light.
Like a hand.
On a blanket.
And took the what.
Herself.
I cannot tell you how a moon says things.
Because she doesn't.
The moon has never said a single word in all her nights.
And she is not going to begin for us.
But anyone who has ever been outside late.
Truly late.
In the hour with no name.
Knows that the moon can mean things.
In the way that light means things.
And lying there with his eye half closed,
The old whale.
Understood her as plainly as if it had been whale songs.
I see you.
Meant the moon.
That was the first thing.
It is the first thing everyone wants to know.
And the moon always says it first.
I see you.
Old friend.
I have been seeing you.
For 200 years.
The whale lays still.
The light lay on him.
I saw you when you were small.
Meant the moon.
Moving gently underwater.
There has never been a night.
You were not under my eye.
Or my memory.
I have watched you watch them all.
The fishing boats.
The mail packets.
The great ships full of sleepers with their bundles.
You have kept ten thousand watches.
And in ten thousand nights.
You've never asked anyone for anything.
The silver path of her light.
Ran from the whale's back.
To the edge of the world.
And rocked there.
Slow and bright.
But I know the wish.
Meant the moon.
I've always known it.
Or the heart.
Of all your dreams.
And I have been keeping them for you.
Everyone.
And they are safe.
And tonight.
Old will.
This once.
The watch is mine.
I am at my fullest and my lowest.
And my kindest.
And I have nothing else to do tonight in all the world.
The sea is flat.
From here to everywhere.
The little ship is sound.
The cat sleeps with one ear up.
Nothing is coming.
Nothing is needed.
Nothing is wanted.
Anywhere.
By anyone.
Except.
.
.
One thing.
Which is many years overdue.
The light came up the whale's silver back.
And rested on his great,
Tired,
Half-closed eyes.
As self.
As an eyelid itself.
Close it.
Meant to the moon.
Both halves old friends.
All of you.
All at once.
I have the watch.
And the sea.
Who had been listening underneath everything.
The way she always does.
Rose along the whale's vast side in one.
Slow warm swell and tell Tim.
Held all of him.
Every ton and every year of him.
The way she holds everything that trusts her.
And said the only thing she has ever said.
Which suddenly sounded quite different.
Because for the first time in two hundred years it.
Was being set.
To him.
There.
There.
There.
And the great right eye of Old Moon back.
The awake eye.
The watch-keeper's eye.
The eye that had seen ten thousand ships.
Safely into morning.
Slowly.
The early.
Gratefully.
All the way.
Closed.
