Some things do not easily
leave the sea.
In an instant they shift
from buoyant grace
to cumbersome weight.
Remember that night
we stood beside the surf
and the whole wet world
stretched shining before us?
We wrestled the wave runner
onto the trailer, and I
felt some kinship with
those first prehistoric fish
who dragged their lobe fins
onto the beach, those fish
who, driven by what?
struggled up and out
and learned a new way to move,
a new way to breathe,
grew a new kind of skin
and a new kind of spine.
For a moment, tugging
on the wet rope,
I knew it, some hint of the drive
bred into my body
over the past four hundred
million years. How I gasped
at the gift of it all—these
legs, these lungs, this upright head,
these biceps burning
against the burden
of emergence, the glitter
of light as it leaves, the scent
of honest sweat.
From whence comes such a powerful urge to live a new life?
The metaphor at the core of this poem is gonna haunt me for quite awhile. It covers so much fecund ground.
right … we’ll never know what pulled those first fish out of the sea–escape? but what gratitude!
Beautiful. Really like the title’s implications.
Thank you Jazz! I considered the title for quite a while …
That wave runner, such a surprise for it to work in such ancient and evolutionary proportions. Again, those first five lines set up the struggle so well.