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