Effusive feeling,
Heart pumping,
And I’m jumping,
Jumping overboard.
Abandoning ship,
I leap into the frothy wake
Of a watery domain.
No alarm is given
And the ship moves on.
As the sea quiets itself,
Dolphins suddenly appear.
They move in close
To cavort at my sides.
Slapping their tails,
They wheel about
And stare at me
With absolute recognition.
I am overwhelmed
By, yet, another wave of joy.
The heralds of my destiny
Have arrived.
They have come
To escort me to an island,
Terra Nueva,
A new place of being.
There are no maps
To show the way,
Only ancient memory and knowingness.
The dolphins are my brothers and sisters
Peers of the human race.
Yet, they never built a civilization.
They never made anything.
No libraries,
No penitentiaries,
No monuments to fallen heroes.
No big investments for the future.
No applications for meaningless jobs.
They didn’t make money
And they never went bankrupt.
They never made war
And annihilate whole races.
But what is the secret
Between our race and theirs?
Why did they reject the land
And return to the sea?
Why did they diverge
From our path?
From the need to conquer
And control?
Perhaps they didn’t want to pay
The price we will.
So are you allowed to write a poem that talks about dolphins and not about coyotes? Isn't there some unwritten rule? ;)
ReplyDeleteBut I guess, in the context of intelligence, yeah, the coyote does not fit into this one. So...sometimes, the rules have to be broken.
This poem put me in mind of the star maps of the I Kiribati - their way of navigation. Dolphins and sharks are central to their cosmology - I found this link http://www.midnightsciencejournal.com/2011/04/15/a-home-for-atlantis/
ReplyDeleteI had a PhD student who immersed himself there - here's a link to his work - http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:7901/a_Gilkes.pdf
"What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy." - Ursula LeGuin
ReplyDeletetime to ponder on the meaning of life
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this Tiger. A JOY to read.
ReplyDeleteI love dolphins. I think of them as the angels of the sea. Wonderful poem...gets one thinking. Thank you Tiger
ReplyDelete