Pleasures, Dolphin-like

Following a friend's posts on commuting across the Bosphorus (here and here), the idea of the ferry was fresh in my head.

We seem to have emerged, tulip-like, from winter here. The public parks are full of fresh flower beds, and the lawns haven't yet been worn down by the routines of summer. I was on the ferry the other morning, a day after rain, staring more or less vacantly to the south, out past Sarayburnu and into the shimmer of Marmara. Suddenly, a movement in the water: something like the knuckles of a hand being dragged across a screen, a body rising to the surface, and then with a shock of recognition, dolphins.

I can't remember ever seeing them in the Bosphorus, though my aunt wasn't terribly surprised that I'd seen them. I rushed out to the back deck to see if I can catch a photo. Nothing, predictably enough, but there was the city spread against the sky. I tried to remember the opening lines about Antony, how his pleasures, dolphin-like, rose above the waves. Beautiful, fleeting, and difficult to capture.