Look at how the Indus River dolphin
brought itself back from extinction. It can happen.
They live in sound. Nearly blind,
they hunt the murky river waters,
echolating day and night, a sonic existence,
blissful, in an audio way.
They ask:
Where, again. Where, again. Where.
Bats and whales, companions in sound—
echoes of space, texture, and time.
Soundwaves of clicks
bounce off catfish, shale, riverbanks
and their echoes return as acoustic images.
They navigate and hunt,
fill their bellies, all in complete darkness.
Up against pollution, dams, a silent fish net,
somehow they continue to populate. Their
soundscape says Here. Here. Here.
Not “This is where I am” or
Not “I give this to you” kind of Here,
but as an offering of presence. Here.
This language of shape-sounds that brought them back
from the brink, again. Reminding me to shake off
the past pointing a finger of regret
and the future handing me worry beads. I hear the poem
of the Indus River dolphin, its sonic consciousness
of Here. Here Now.
I re-shape myself.
Yvonne Higgins Leach is the author of a poetry collection In the Spaces Between Us (Kelsay Books 2024). Her first collection Another Autumn was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2014. She spent decades balancing a career in communications and public relations, raising a family, and pursuing her love of writing poetry.
