Why Sturgeon Leap
Could leaping be hard-wired into sturgeon
brains since the late Cretaceous
for no other reason than feeling good,
the way cows face north or south when chewing
their cud, conforming to the earth’s magnetic pull,
or flower-carrying crocodiles
give their juniors piggyback rides,
or the way my thirteen-month schnoodle
chases her tail for several rounds
until she catches up, then unwinds again —
same motivation that made a Neanderthal,
weary from hunting or gathering berries,
stencil dozens of hands on a cave wall
in Maltravieso, small as the palm prints
we’d later call art on school bulletin boards —
same reason a Homo sapiens picked up
a bird bone 42,000 years ago and gouged
holes to shape the sound of breath rushing through
its length to become the first flute, left
for us to find in Geissenkloesterle cave,
or an ancient Sumerian wedged stylus into clay
to produce the first cuneiform writing?
If it’s true that all behavior of living things
enables them to advance the survival dial
an extra notch, then you’d probably stick to theories
of adaptive jumps for seizing airborne prey,
or enacting a fail-safe courtship display,
or gulping in air to maintain even-keeled buoyancy,
and you might not even recognize joy
when it ups and splashes you in the face.