loco motor

Just a little found-poem I came across today in a borrowed book on Alexander Technique. The author (Missy Vineyard, How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live), is explaining the challenges and advantages of being bipedal, beginning with a bit of an evolutionary biology lesson. But her review of invertebrates and quadrupeds also seemed to offer some nice implications about personal, inner evolution, and the drive to move and advance: within the self, among life's elemental forces, and as part of whatever greater context that self may perceive...


all
possess their own
complex locomotor strategies
move individual parts
as well as the whole

earliest
in a watery world
range of motion
spanned the length
generating rhythmically alternating contractions
this sideward bending was not random
functioned to orient and propel
body followed head's direction

moved out of the water
strategies were derived as offshoots
turned scales
into feathers
leave the ground altogether

supported
upward from below
the body up off the ground
nature layered new
double helix arrangement
wrapped around the trunk and spiraled downward
onto the limbs

means of propulsion
no longer a laterally bending
leveraging against water's resistance
but
coordinated synchrony
pushing against the ground
forward
not through water but air

still toward its head
now a second orienting direction
toward the earth and gravity's pull
every weight-bearing step
musculature
coordinated its movement
ground

standing on two feet
a delicately adjusting and readjusting
balancing act
step onto each successive forward limb
toward the front
transfer
entire body from single limb to single limb
we run
become limbless again, propelling
into space and leaving the earth
(for brief moments) altogether