Walking

May 10 2019

One step follows another.

As if on auto-pilot

one shuffles, trudges, grumbles along.

The muscle memory

of the forebears who walked to the ends of the earth

a toddler's first stumbling steps.

The inherent drive

that impels us doggedly on

with a kind of viscerally felt urgency.

Even the flaneur

the wanderer

the idly strolling plodder,

putting one foot after the other

in steadily measured steps,

next

            ... next

                             ... next.

They say it's a marvel of engineering,

the loaded arch, the shock absorbing joints,

19 muscles

26 bones

a deeply callused sole.

Bed-bound

I dream of walking

in both wakefulness and sleep,

pacing

like a restless animal

in glass-walled confinement.

Paralyzed

I envy movement's freedom,

the agency

to walk away

choose my path

feel my body strain.

Again and again

I learn how to walk

as disability hobbles me.

Feel I will die, if forced to be still.

Like a shark, perpetually stalking

even before it's been born

life begins and ends in motion.

Seeks completion

in the closed circle

of a life fully lived,

as erratic as it is

unknowable its goal.

The satisfying arc of an old man

looking back on himself.

The void

of untimely death

and so many steps unfilled.

This is what we are, as humans: the world's champion endurance animals. Once they descended from the trees, our nomadic ancestors walked. Long enough and far enough to populate the ends of the earth. In running to exhaustion, heat is almost always the limiting factor. Why lions give up the chase; why wolves eventually run down their large-bodied prey. And why we became hairless (or relatively so!), less robust than our primate cousins, and acquired the capacity to sweat. Perhaps even why we assumed an upright posture, sacrificing the speed of 4 legs, while coming up with such a brilliantly engineered foot. So evolution fashioned us into the ultimate walking animals: it is in our nature, and it emerges as a kind of urgent restlessness. And why, when we are bed-bound, confined, or intentionally inactive, we quickly dwindle and sicken.

And yes, fetal sharks do swim in the womb. Not only that, but they hunt and cannibalize their weaker siblings. I wasn't sure if it was fact or myth that sharks must swim continuously. Consulting Google, it turns out that while some must, other types of sharks are perfectly able to rest and still pass water through their gills. So true enough, at least for poetry!

I've been struggling with this persistent achilles peritendinitis. But I still try to walk daily: not just for the dogs, but for my own well-being. So I've had to adjust my terrain and distance, as well as my footwear and gait. Yes, as in the poem: actually re-learned how to walk, my advanced age notwithstanding!

In the poem, though, walking becomes a metaphor for moving through the trajectory of a life: in which one persists, not knowing the destination, or even purpose; and where the urgency to walk represents the life force.