I Sing the Body Aquatic

When I offer my sweaty hand in greeting

I can see the future. No matter

how gently you squeeze, I know

when our hands meet you will crowd

my crooked index and pinky fingers

against their straight-as-an-arrow brothers

so that my hand looks more like a fin

than an appendage perfectly evolved

for tying shoelaces or wiping a tear

from the red face of the missionary

who rode his bicycle under the sun

all day to reach my porch.

When he takes my hand he won’t find hope

or brotherhood or whatever

he’s looking for. Because I can see

the future at times like this

and because I have an unshakeable faith

in the law of averages, I know

when our hands embrace he’ll find

proof of natural selection

in the shape of my fingers, evolutionary

holdovers from an era of gills

when the earth was all aquarium

and some distant relative with sleepy eyes

and splayed fins who tired of being mocked

by handsome carp said, To hell with it

and climbed out of the sea and across

moonlit dunes toward a sandy life.

In that moment he couldn’t have predicted

300 million years later one of his

descendants having long since grown legs

would be belly down on a beach

before an ocean that would carry him

and his own to the land of Montezuma

to roast in the sun for four centuries

where their conversion into dry Catholics

would be so perfect you would never guess

I can’t swim to save my life

or anyone else’s or that the sound of a wave

pounding a rock makes me nostalgic.

You would never know any of this

until we met on the street

or you knocked on my door and embraced

my hand and felt Galilee on my palm,

which you might mistake for nervousness

unless you were familiar with the embarrassment

of having the only wet fins at a party

because somewhere in your family there was a pike

or two hailing from one of the lost schools

that under pain of death swam

far from the Atlantic or Mediterranean,

around both of which I hear shame

and fear are still the coins of the realm.