The Hang of It

You’ve somewhat mastered form –

you’ve managed to effect a biologically

operative infrastructure which sustains the frame

and keeps it warm. It’s true it’s hard to recollect

the references. There’s so much you don’t want
to keep in mind. Bipedalism rankles you,
for one thing – how you’d rather swing or flump
or puddle blindly into an amorphous lump

than muddle through maneuvering
the brittle sticks and joints and linchpins
of a hip or ankle, knee or toe! Oh,
to be the drape and flow of some plush cloth

instead of trapped inside a droopy wrap of skin:
you’d rather be a towel than a jowl.
Where do the arms begin? How do fingers
reach the wrist? Where’s the list? You forgot it.

(You got besotted with the charms of ears instead,
and put too many on.) Intricately wearying, adhering
to the vertebrae! – or working out the trick
of the discreet evacuation of compacted waste

without attracting looks. Those masses of cooked
wood paste they call books have not been any help.
And yet – you don’t entirely dislike the yelp,  
and yaw and bumble you’ve become.

Might one derive some useful art therefrom?
Bewildering, this endless roar and rumble!
Watch and wait: awake to the shebang of it.
Perhaps you’ll get the hang of it.



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