Ultimate Connectivity:
forgetting fear and feeling free
Janet Kuypers
10/9/16
Standing in the water
maybe twenty meters from the shoreline
I saw one Sea Lion facing off
with another Sea Lion on the beach.
In an effort to say
that they were the beach master,
one started to chase
the other into the water,
to kick them off their domain.
Now, a Sea Lion
can get up to seven feet long,
and when one male
started chasing the other
into the water,
these giant animals
were barreling straight toward me.
But no, I wasn’t scared,
they weren’t after me,
so I stood perfectly still
as one splashed past me to my left,
and the other splashed past me to my right.
I think a few people
at the beach were scared for me,
but I was fine,
and went into the water
and swam toward
the row of sleeping
white tipped sharks
along the ocean floor.
I counted more than two dozen,
and was stunned how perfectly
these sharks remain so straight
in a row when they slept.
So after seeing the sea,
I swam back to shore
and turned my eye to the sky.
The Frigate birds
would swarm us humans
hoping for leftover food,
but I photographed flying finches,
and watched Nasca birds,
both male and female,
keeping their eggs warm
before they would hatch.
It’s nice to see
when looking at creatures
not like you and me,
that we can see
that they may not be
as scary as can be,
but, like you and me,
they are just living to be free.
And when you look closely,
that is
really nice
to see.
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