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Sitting by the bay during a weekday watching the water I thought a manatee I observed
Just beneath the surface, it came up for just a few seconds and didn’t reemerge. 
I followed it with my eyes, seeing its imprint on the surface in the slightly smoother wrinkles in the water where the manatee’s body drifted just beneath it.
And it felt like a privilege, the kind for which I live, like seeing a dolphin in the sea leaping and teasing, then swimming away to other beaches.
Manatee in the bay, if you could hear me my respect I’d like to pay 
I’d like to at least give you my thanks and say:
I don’t see you as just a manatee or dolphin at sea, laughing or flirting with the surface of the water where you make such a brief imprint as you look up toward your sky
It crosses my mind that you’re looking to see why birds can fly but you are left to swim in the ocean when your body is so heavy and the birds seem so light
You wish you too could take flight and they could float under the water for just one day,
But I’d say there will be a day like that one day, perhaps today or another day
And perhaps another day is far away or perhaps today is just another day for you in the bay.
And perhaps that’s something nobody is meant to know, and that’s why nobody tells you, and so blindly and alone we all seem to roam.
Perhaps that’s why kindly to us your untroubled face you just momentarily show,
And return to the deep where nobody can see what goes on in darker waters
Where you see a shark and want to scream a warning but cannot without air
And you see glimpses of light reflected off glass bottles and fish and you wish to share 
But nobody can hear your verse
And between the incommunicable beauty and the silent shark you don’t know what is worse.
You trust we don’t mean any harm we cause because you have no choice in the matter anyhow
You silently listen and look because you have no voice in the chatter between I and Thou
We call you a sea cow
But we all wish to see you anyhow
You look like a dump truck and are quite large and heavy
But after the day is done you were the highlight of it, and out of everything today I see
Perhaps all I will recall twenty years from now or in eternity is the privilege of seeing a cow at sea.
But perhaps I don’t need to tell you and you already know
Today is just another day for you, another opportunity to give your brief show.
And I would thank you for it if I just had a way,
But I’ll just have to thank my lord on another beautiful unclouded day.
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