Maybe things are better than we imagine
if a rubber inner-tube still can send us
drifting down a sinuous, tree-draped river
like the Wisconsin far removed from spores of touristococcus.
As we bob half-in and half-out of water
with our legs like tentacles, dangling limply
under the surface we are like invertebrate creatures, floating
on a cosmic dropleta caravan of
giant-sized amoebas, without a clear-cut
sense of direction It's as if we've started evolving backwards:
mammal, reptile, polliwog, protozoon
toward that dark primordial soup we seem so
eager to get to. Funny, how warm water will whisper secrets
in its native language to every cellyet
we, the aggregation, have just begun to
fathom the gestures.