The Creation Story

Carl Sagan narrates the real story of creation.







NOSTALGIA IN A FISH MARKET

Three billion years to get here,
resisting the home in waxed paper,

the burgeoning lungs. Fillet of flesh
and scale at rest in an aluminum pan.

A phantom of fins pokes through my blouse,
through the inevitable nets; drench

of salt soaks my atoms. We gathered
and glittered in a living armada.

Centuries before miasmic heat, a button-like
brain bloomed into hemispheres. Sidewalks

rushed like rivers to the shore
fins stiffened into legs.

I had no idea of running with daggers.
Liquid ceded to gas, ichthyic to animalia.

I wanted fingers more than clefted gills,
a continent of air.  The music of the water,

gone from my ears.

                                                                            --Shaw Kenawe