Way Of The Dolphin

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My new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, has just been published. The book contains seventy-three poems, retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years, about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. For the next few months, I’d like to share poems from the new book with you.

It was years ago that I learned that our job as spirits in bodies is to let our spirit rise from within to meet and inhabit the world, every chance we get. It was walking along the Battery in Charleston that this all came back to me, so very clearly, while sighting a dolphin.

WAY OF THE DOLPHIN

Standing in the harbor, these slick

wonders slip their fins in and out

of early sun. I close my eyes and re-

member being wheeled into surgery

all those years ago; believing my job

was to meet my surgeon at the sur-

face, so the rib he had to remove

would slip out, like a dolphin of

bone, as soon as he would cut me.

I’ve learned that everything that

matters goes the way of the dolphin: