Dear Dolphin

The shaman at Broadway and Main

with a plastic shaker and some sage

says you’re my power animal. Says

we both have big brains, like to chatter.

I don’t know anything about dolphins, except

blowholes.

On the website appointment form, I wrote

Please help me like myself. Or maybe just lose

some weight.

When she put me under, I had lots of visions

of beavers, so forgive me if I don't warm up to you

right away.

I wasn’t raised near the coast, hey? Far

from it.

The shaman says there’s tons of food

where you’re from. Squids and stuff. Says you can teach me

to just keep driving past KFC, there’s rice at home.

Dolphin, I drank the mystery tincture

and laid a bundle of pink sweet pea on Wreck Beach

to be swept up and floated out to you — an offering

for your dolphin dining table

in exchange for self discipline. To not be

such a whale? Ba-dump chh!