Vestiges
Poetry Writing Contest response
In homage to Elaine Morgan’s “The Aquatic Ape,” which posits that our evolutionary ancestors sheltered from the heat during the Pliocene era by returning to the sea.
Still civilized
I pull on the neoprene
lock the car and lift the surfboard
head across the crumbling asphalt
littered with broken glass
and fast food husks
my son following
still half asleep
brooding fourteen-year-old broodings
I’m limping
some work-week injury
I don’t remember
and didn’t notice
gingering my gait
a spot of pain I can cover
with my human thumb
a mortality memo
a reality reminder
a shortcut unexcused
worrying my ankle
I rose thinking about
unsplit firewood
and failing fences
all the pre-spring emergencies
of garden and barn and pasture
my endless and precious lists
At dawn I rose and coffeed up
noticing the clouds
scudding out of the east
I woke my boy
Now sand-shuffling
I’m limping
The breeze nips at our backs
The breakers line up
for us
They’ve made the journey
to us
over the whale-road
from some lonesome storm
lashing far Siberia many days ago
I launch my little craft into them
glad of my synthetic blubber
I stroke quick and deep
the webs between my fingers helping minimally
duck my head into the cold harsh stuff
my nose designed to cup air
cutting through eddies and roiling crisp bubbles
Aware of dark shapes in the depths
Stroking further
my ancient reptilian brain assigns sentience
to an approaching troop of swells
who anticipate my intent
and charge
I’m salty with tricks
and watercraft
I’ve known thousands of their kind
tickled the bellies of their ancestors
with duck-dives and rolls and timing
Their power is wasted
My son must work harder
his mammalian diving reflex
innate but untested
time will revive the muscle of memory
our shared physical prehistory from the parched Pliocene
of a million years ago
our ancestors fleeing from the heat
becoming aquatic apes
paddling in the water and squinting in the sun
lightly blubbered
perhaps hairless
perhaps not
and a complex of facial muscles
common to no other primate
We two cross the white water
and sit among the hissing swells
no longer completely dry-land human
Gulls inspect us
small black terns bob close by
a small seal plays a peeking game
the rules known only to her
a gang of smirking pelicans
float together
as cliquish as young surfers
A set rolls in
I pick my wave
it’s the fourth
I like the shifting peak
it promises to set up the inside line
where the speed is
it’s hard to catch but I work
into it until I feel the glide
and push and I’m up
snapping a turn across the face
then off the bottom and trimming to the spot
where the flying begins
I’m not limping now
I’m Waterman
wild-mannered amphibious primate
web-fingered and hooting
the ancient hoots of aquatic apes
of the Pliocene
walking on water
past a mystified cormorant
I whoop as the wave dies
and hustle out again
We don’t talk much on the water
my boy and I
the sea is not for chitchat
mundane nattering
The sea is its own endless poem
each canto
a rustling tide for the senses
a coursing of wisdom
a moment of peace
then shoreward
to dwell among
the sabretooths
This poem has been submitted to the Promptly Written 2023 Poetry Writing Contest. A similar version of it is also in my latest book, Turn Your Back on the Shore.
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