Long ago lived a whale species,

Pacific waters they roamed

Bones white and ashen, but skin unknown.

Their heads brow shaped like domes

Diving through the canyons to feed,

Used a ‘click’ to find their food.

Seals and sharks and smaller whales

Albicetus had ensued

These predators were hunted too,

Human whalers wanted wax.

Moby Dick rammed their boats,

Scattered, they ate their backs

One hero of the whaler ships,

Wanted to understand

The ramming whale, to no avail

And suffered for a time.

Ninety-two days alone at sea,

Gone was the ship Essex.

Gone was Moby Dick undersea,

Along with his wet wax

Small, but strong, large was the whale’s maw,

Sets of teeth, up and down,

Albitecus devoured.

Sea creatures feared its crown.

Beyond it’s skull lies the unknown,

Spermaceti organ.

Lying beyond the wax inside,

Humans leave the burden.

Only product 1839,

Today a thirst for knowledge.

Albitecus sperm whale evolved,

Back then no acknowledge.

Fifteen million year old fossil,

Looked at in nineteen-twenty,

Put away with walrus bones,

Mistakes made: a plenty.

Unusual color of white,

Albitecus suited.

Smaller than those of today,

Its teeth still trumped

Today’s sperm whales that roam oceans,

Behind vat liquid wax

Lays today’s biggest brains on earth,

Still eating the same snacks.

Undersea canyons, it hunts squid,

Without ancestors maw

Like Albitecus it’s hunted too,

Can like Moby Dick gnaw.