! Do Dolphins Leap Into Dolphin Heaven? Poem by Michael Shepherd

Be a dolphin. Feel yourself
at home in the beloved water
in which you were fathered, mothered,
fed, grow up, and swim with all your friends…

and then one day, you see them disappear from view –
a powerful twist of tail… their body’s gone…
gone where? … you find that air, which
your nostrils have already breathed, is more…
a lighter, unsupported world
in which all dolphins leap
to celebrate their joy
in being – just as they are…

and, perhaps, fall back into
familiar water, with now greater joy...

who knows, what dolphins think –
or how they think, their instincts water-pure?
and what is air to them…
and whether air is where
they are on equal terms with those strange creatures,
human beings – yet with whom
they have a wonderful affinity;
even in protecting them
when danger threatens men
in dolphins’ safe, free element..

The early Christians, seeing dolphins play
around the shores of Greece and Italy
and Palestine and Egypt, saw a parallel:
in that men, when lost to human thought
beyond all thought, leap into an element
of joy and freedom and a world above
as air to dolphin’s water; their spirits leapt,
bringing back to earth a memory
never then forgotten, of what lay in store…

and scratched upon dark, taper-flickering walls
of catacombs and prisons, a dolphin leaping;
‘ My body’s here; my spirit’s leaping there
where joy and freedom never disappear…’