Maybe things are better than we imagine
if a rubber inner-tube still can send us
drifting down a sinuous, tree-draped river
like the Wisconsin—

far removed from spores of touristococcus.
As we bob half-in and half-out of water
with our legs like tentacles, dangling limply
under the surface

we are like invertebrate creatures, floating
on a cosmic droplet—a caravan of
giant-sized amoebas, without a clear-cut
sense of direction

It's as if we've started evolving backwards:
mammal, reptile, polliwog, protozoon—
toward that dark primordial soup we seem so
eager to get to.

Funny, how warm water will whisper secrets
in its native language to every cell—yet
we, the aggregation, have just begun to
fathom the gestures.