Thursday, July 19, 2012

Day 231: Homo sapiens has to watch his feet when he walks

My musculature is incoherent,
chattering in a fragmented pidgin

built in childhood—a Babel of hips
balancing over knees, a spine leaning

bending and lurching toward heaven,
a head nodding wherever. I remember

tilting low until my chin started to rise.
Three light pounds drifted and curled me up.

I was like a caterpillar uncoiling
from a branch, tongueless and speechless and years

from upright.  Gotta grow, little inchworm,
gotta stitch a gibberish cocoon and take

the measure of Earth, where species are sorted
in terms of bent thumbs and towering spines.

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