Tuesday 28 January 2014

ode to our legs


without asking you where
they have already begun to take you there
they like to run wide and far
if they could they'd run to the furthest star
unboundedly they sprint behind a frisbee in flight
leaping off the solid earth with all their might
give them pedals, chain, rings and two wheels
and they'll cruise around the globe like two perfectly paired eels
take heed, when they feel the rise of a mountain
they will unashamedly gush like a fountain
and go go go
till they've reached the top
they love the caress of flower and veld
and how they rejoice when you take them swimming –
the deep memory of a previous fish existence
makes them throb with the fins' delight

with locomotive pedidexterity
they stitch together the lengths of the lands
they do it with such metronomic regularity
that we can not help but pendulum forward on the path of life
after the heart, the legs have
the strongest sense of beat and rhythm
are we surprised then that our souls rejoice
when we take a walk or bounce into dance?

i love their quickwittedness and their swift ingenuity
they are programmed to dart from danger,
and dash toward a loved one
with them we can become a crouching tiger and a leaping frog
that particular proportion between thigh and calve
articulated by the magnificent joint of the knee
evolution has expertly engineered them into elegant machines
that launch us like beams of velocity
iridescently weaving
the
distances
closer

oh, Legs, you fine and marvelous things!
and not only have we one,
but TWO!
the wonder of the hominid rising to stand firm and tall
among millennia of Time's twists and turns

when these two brothers rest at night
they do not completely relent to sleepy quiet
for the memory of the day's roamings
shoots quivers of spasms through the muscles
and the dreaming of tomorrow's tread
pinches and twitches those nerve-endings
into adventurous thrills
that can not wait for
the new day's expeditions to begin