Tag Archive for 'the panther'

Found Poetry Friday: Kinship w/ LifeI

On the 2nd and 4th Friday of every month SuperForester Jordan “rediscovers” a literary gem from the vast treasure trove of an art form that, in our technological age, has become largely under-appreciated and “lost”.

Last night I finally got around to seeing the movie THE COVE — a film that SuperForester Aaron first posted about several weeks ago, and has since inspired such many impassioned posts from Jackson, the creation of the dolphin rap, and the dolphins are awesome website, (them’s a lot of links, all of which beg exploring).

If a great film is one that can not only entertain but also elevate — with the power to profoundly influence, affect, or change the way we see our world, our beliefs and values, and ourselves… then The Cove may just be the best movie of the year.

As this is a Found Poetry post, in honor of the film I bring you not a poem about dolphins (if you know any good ones, please send them my way)… but a poem about the perils of caging anything that needs, that should, that must be free.

THE PANTHER

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

—   by Rainer Maria Rilke

If you have never had a profound encounter with non-human life in the wild, I urge you to do so.  Don’t support dolphin shows like Seaworld that promote wild capture. Read J. Allen Boone’s Kinship with All Life.  SaveJapanDolphins.org!