Kinship

Aug 7 2015

I want to believe

the stories of dolphins

who rescue ship-wrecked sailors.

Who materialize from the depths

like answered prayers,

holding them up

so they can breathe,

shepherding them to shore.

And envy the men

who rescue stranded whales,

beached, high and dry;

relentless sun

on virgin skin,

lungs, heaving under their weight.

How the urgency

to be of help

expands,

from family, to tribe, to stranger,

from fellow human being

to a wholly different species;

alien

as the cold dark sea

from which he comes.

Imagine that great glistening eye

looking back into mine.

Might I catch a glimpse

of the ineffable soul

in its soft brown depths?

And imagine standing beside

such a powerful creature,

so immense

and so improbably helpless.

Who consents to my touch

even welcomes it.

Will he feel gratitude?

Will he remember

his lifelong debt,

the collective memory

of our kindness to them

their kindness back?

And will he grasp the kinship

of life on earth,

fellow mammals

separated by millions of years,

intelligent beings

whose world-views

barely intersect?

As mysterious

as quantum physics,

as the concept of distance

measured in years of light,

is such a vast intelligence

without reading, or tools

fire, or hands.

How much we share, how much is alien,

and lacking language

to bridge the gap.

The self-awareness

of a social animal, like us.

And the precariousness

of the unarmed hunt,

taking whole animals, raw.

Who sings intricate songs

of longing, or love

across thousands of miles of ocean.

So sleek and fast

in his exo-planet

of unmapped sea,

while we are small, and weak

and too easily eaten.

So we haul water

and clamber over rocks

and console him with nonsense

in our soft terrestrial tongue.

Until the tide returns, and floats him off,

back to the welcoming sea

a grateful pod.

Did he pause, and take a long look back,

perplexed that these small angular animals

would take such care?

Wondering why a species

from another planet

would even bother,

when all he's known

is either family

or mortal threat.

And wishing we were smart enough to talk

and share with him

the wonders of life on land, survival in air;

what we feel, in common,

why we bothered to care.

In my daily paper, there have been two stories in the last few days about people rescuing beached whales. Perhaps it's a time of year when strandings are more common. Or perhaps some slow news days. Or perhaps, these are deeply moving stories, and command our attention.

I also recently heard a piece on Fresh Air (the NPR radio show, which I often download in podcast form) about dolphins. In particular, the interviewee related a remarkable anecdote about one of those almost mythological stories of dolphins rescuing human beings; except this wasn't myth, it was documented and unimpeachable.

(The poem is imprecise about just which animal, conflating dolphins and orcas and whales. Because not all cetaceans hunt, and not all are so tightly social. I think the story of the human rescue involved spinner dolphins, and one of the strandings was of killer whales.)

Anyway, in the news pieces, the rescuers interviewed all express awe and wonder at this privileged interaction; almost as if the experience was transformational. I, too, was deeply affected; even as just a reader. I think the context of a newspaper elevates the emotion even more: such acts seem even more selfless and altruistic and incomprehensible when set against the daily litany of all the evil humans do to one another, as well as to the planet. And the stories touch on the deep mystery of fellow feeling: of the kinship of all living things; of the deep longing to reach across the gap and understand a presumably equal but diametrically different intelligence.

According to the podcast, there is a small fringe group who earnestly -- if outlandishly -- believe that dolphins come from another planet: a truly exotic creature, a truly alien intelligence. Of course, life on earth is creative enough to come up with a lot more exotic creature that a mere dolphin; the extreme explanation is hardly called for. But in a way, the worldview of an intelligent underwater social animal who communicates by sonar, and that of an intelligent terrestrial social animal who communicates by written language and has hands and invents machines, are so diametrically different that they might just as well come from other planets. And I use just that imagery in the poem.

On the other hand, it's easy to be distracted by the differences while failing to be intrigued by the similarities: the ineffable kinship of mammals, of social animals, of highly intelligent beings.

So the poem alternates between these two perspectives. I think that's well illustrated by the jarring reference to both quantum physics and years of light. Because when you whipsaw between the outer limits of microcosm and macrocosm, you suddenly feel a lot closer to the fellow inhabitants of that infinitesimally narrow -- and far more comprehensible -- band where living things reside. And because none of us really understands quantum physics, no matter how much we fool ourselves; just as no one truly comprehends just how big a light year is. (Not to mention that the imagery of physics and light years also works well in the context of alien creatures and exo-planets.)

Ultimately, the poem has a hopeful message about reaching across the gap, about celebrating the commonalities and not the differences. ...Which could, of course, be equally applied to our fellow humans.

My favourite stanza is the 3rd last. I'm concerned that a lot of the preceding stuff is repetitive: that I'm saying much the same thing over again; that I'm not trusting the reader; that I'm getting lost in the weeds. While this stanza gets back to the narrative, the story-telling. And it shows it instead of saying it -- the cardinal rule of poetry. I also like the 3rd stanza, looking into his eye: ...that great glistening eye/ looking back into mine./ Might I catch a glimpse/ of the ineffable soul/ in its soft brown depths? And I like the inversion in the last stanza, taking the point of view of the whale, who is as mystified by us as we are by him. I hope the reader smiles at ...wishing we were smart enough to talk!