What You Don't See on David Attenborough is All the Waiting

Genevieve Carver

When I first left the city, you took me
to see a starling murmuration –

the romance of it, huddled side
by side in the darkening hide

our breath blooming
like question marks

but no starlings came, only the cold.
Only the weight of who would call it,

when we’d stand and trudge back 
along the churned-up path to the car.

Years later, I’m waiting for
dolphins. The boat swaggers.

The sea billows like a silk sheet.
Every wavelet looks like a dorsal fin.

On the chug back into port 
the research team tell me

there’s not been a no-show for 11 years
so perhaps I should feel lucky.

Even back on land, part of me
still waits, eyes sea-blind

from the glare of grey. Even as 
I turn the key in the lock.

When I shut my lids, a cloud
of starlings breaks through the dusk.

The Science

This poem was written as part of my residency with the University of Aberdeen's School of Biological Sciences, who took me out on their research boat to observe fieldwork for their long-term photo ID project studying bottlenose dolphin populations in the Moray Firth, Scotland. As becomes clear in the poem however, we didn't see any dolphins, so this poem is about the struggle that can be involved in the scientific process itself, especially when dealing with wild animals!

The Poet

Genevieve Carver is the author of A Beautiful Way to be Crazy (Verve Poetry Press 2020), and Landsick (Broken Sleep Books 2023). Her poetry has appeared in journals including Mslexia, The White Review, The North, Magma and Poetry News, and she won The Moth Nature Writing Prize 2022, judged by Max Porter. Genevieve is currently Poet in Residence with the University of Aberdeen’s School of Biological Sciences, where she's writing in response to their work studying bottlenose dolphin, porpoise and harbour seals in the Moray Firth, and the fulmar colony on the uninhabited island of Eynhallow in Orkney.

Next poem: A Body Under Control by Eleni Cay