This poem must have been influenced by something I read or saw about dolphins that would have beached themselves and/or dolphins that got netted when the fishermen were catching tuna. As I said, I would carry out several issues of the LA TIMES newspaper to entertain myself on alert.
Even if I were as far inland as one could get, growing up near the coast in California ensured that thoughts of the sea were never far.
Dolphin Navy
I have tightened these thoughts
like trawler nets
caught about some illegal catch
bound to the sea.
Of ashes and dirt
in need of the ocean's sweat.
Blessed are drops that bind us again,
where we lost our trace in the sand.
I would not so splash,
except as an expiring fish,
I have no dignified flesh with death;
Cannot so decompose
that a segment of embarrassment does not remain.
Impressed against the beach--
where a wary humanity, seeking to anoint,
pushes all back into the sea to swim.
And like a slave-ship,
mastered by demands to sail,
I cannot resist.
Even if I were as far inland as one could get, growing up near the coast in California ensured that thoughts of the sea were never far.
Dolphin Navy
I have tightened these thoughts
like trawler nets
caught about some illegal catch
bound to the sea.
Of ashes and dirt
in need of the ocean's sweat.
Blessed are drops that bind us again,
where we lost our trace in the sand.
I would not so splash,
except as an expiring fish,
I have no dignified flesh with death;
Cannot so decompose
that a segment of embarrassment does not remain.
Impressed against the beach--
where a wary humanity, seeking to anoint,
pushes all back into the sea to swim.
And like a slave-ship,
mastered by demands to sail,
I cannot resist.
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