A Poem Unmarred by My Thoughts

Poem of the Day:
"None of This Could Be Metaphor" by Todd Davis
The Least of These


None of This Could Be Metaphor

The experts tell us dolphins strand themselves
when they become disoriented, injured or sick.
Yet such explanations fail as numbers grow.
Off the coast of Florida more than forty
belly themselves onto flats and sandbars.

As the tide goes out, leaving less than a foot
of the sea, more swim in. If the only stipulation
for beauty is color and form, these corals the sun
casts in rising and falling upon the lengths
of their sides, the lines of their backs, would suggest

a map, directions for a way back to the waters
where none of this could be metaphor, where
dolphins leap, not for some abstract notion
of joy, but because it feels good to lift the body
out of the arms of the sea, even if only

for a matter of seconds, to feel the flesh fall
back toward the current, the tide's movements
tugged by the moon, the taste of salt, the refraction
of light beneath the water's surface.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey