The Sex Life of Barnacles - Jan 21 2026

The Sex Life of Barnacles 

Jan 21 2026

Darwin was a walker.
He walked twice a day,
methodically marking his laps
on the regular path
he set through the woods.

Was he lost in thought
or present?
Did he retreat into his head
 — leaving his body
to walk of its own accord —
or did he lose himself
in mindful contemplation
of the sights and sounds,
the pastoral wood
he was surrounded by?

I walk as well.
Mostly on autopilot.
So I might just as well be disembodied;
lost 
in rarefied thought,
an isolated brain
in its bubbling vat
of essential nutrients.

So much so I surprise myself,
looking up
and seeing just how far I’ve gone,
shaking my head 
at how I even got there.
But while he came up with natural selection
the sex life of barnacles
and the inheritance 
of facial expressions,
I try to remember how movies end,
recall my many embarrassments,
fret about taxes
I neglected to pay.

Of course, the trees don’t care
whether I’m there or not,
the birds and bees
flit about indifferently,
while the weathered rocks
sit impassively,
anchored in the earth
where they’ve always been.
I’m an automaton,
ghosting through the world
unseen

and inconsequential,
the here and now

hastily passed

in the succession of time and place.

Perhaps, if even for a second
I stopped and raised my head
things would change.
If my inward looking brain
suspended in its warm nutrient broth
could be turned off for a while,

my feverish thoughts quieted

and space for sensation

left to come flooding in;

a firehose of the senses

from smell to touch,

unfiltered
unprocessed
unjudged.

As if encountering the world 
for the first

and only time.

It seems I’m either walking lost in thought, or walking mindfully and receptively. The first comes more naturally to me. But the latter seems more sensible, and is probably both more creative and restorative. Instead of the mind feverishly circling in on itself, as it usually does — pattern-seeking, problem solving, and darkly introspective — simply being: encountering the world as it is. 

Darwin came up with good questions: sometimes answered them. But I’m no Darwin. So perhaps I’d be better off just giving it a rest.

On the other hand, when I do retreat into my head – as is I must confess is almost always the case – I will frequently find myself working on a tricky line of poetry; and more often than not, it seems to solve itself. There is something about the rhythm and automaticity of walking that is conducive to this kind of satisfying focus and flow.