Be a dolphin. Feel yourself <br />at home in the beloved water <br />in which you were fathered, mothered, <br />fed, grow up, and swim with all your friends… <br /> <br />and then one day, you see them disappear from view – <br />a powerful twist of tail… their body’s gone… <br />gone where? … you find that air, which <br />your nostrils have already breathed, is more… <br />a lighter, unsupported world <br />in which all dolphins leap <br />to celebrate their joy <br />in being – just as they are… <br /> <br />and, perhaps, fall back into <br />familiar water, with now greater joy... <br /> <br />who knows, what dolphins think – <br />or how they think, their instincts water-pure? <br />and what is air to them… <br />and whether air is where <br />they are on equal terms with those strange creatures, <br />human beings – yet with whom <br />they have a wonderful affinity; <br />even in protecting them <br />when danger threatens men <br />in dolphins’ safe, free element.. <br /> <br />The early Christians, seeing dolphins play <br />around the shores of Greece and Italy <br />and Palestine and Egypt, saw a parallel: <br />in that men, when lost to human thought <br />beyond all thought, leap into an element <br />of joy and freedom and a world above <br />as air to dolphin’s water; their spirits leapt, <br />bringing back to earth a memory <br />never then forgotten, of what lay in store… <br /> <br />and scratched upon dark, taper-flickering walls <br />of catacombs and prisons, a dolphin leaping; <br />‘ My body’s here; my spirit’s leaping there <br />where joy and freedom never disappear…’<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-dolphins-leap-into-dolphin-heaven/
