Creation spent, each walked
in that first weather
newly-gaited, not guessing schemes
between the stepping thing and what is stepped on,
how gallops and the plain combine
and fins require sea.
Each learned a way of going forward,
a separate step reflecting self
so masterfully it seemed not learned
but born into the bone;
footprints and the space between
were names in that dumb age.
God those beasts grew beautiful;
every impulse or alarm invented
another wild retreat perfect even
before complete; they could be still as wood;
but it was for hunger they reserved
tremendous, desperate miracles.
Was the leopard mid-air between branch
and prey when we first saw and brought him down,
bee and petal wed when honey
first pursued our lips? Few noticed
one death, some plundered flowers
or realized paradise was ours.
In different beds, like different shoots,
instead of traveling, man
took root; his step became deliberate
and he made paths
repeating it; the mind he made
robbed body to attire brain.
Wherever he settled, their mystery fled,
he dreamed them damaged, dreamed them dead;
as wells to rivers, man his beasts
reduces but cannot replace;
so driven from one wilderness
they found in him wilderness again.