Sometimes we must move
Not shallow gym class work-mimicry
Empty choreography
Planned, timed, synchronised
Movement the purpose, fitness the goal
or health, or presentation
Important, worthy, needed
and yet, a slight, simplistic facsimile
of really moving

Sometimes we must move
Not gentle-stroll-incidental, ancillary activity
Perfect temperature
Sweat-less, shiver-less, comfortable
Sunshine the purpose, restoration the goal
or biophilia, or head-clearing
Cleansing, uplifting, lovely
and yet, orthogonal to the experience
of really moving

Sometimes we must move
For more than moving’s sake
Sincere reverberations
Changing, morphing, building
Action the purpose, elevation the goal
or processing, or releasing
Cathartic, detoxing, rejuvenating
in a way that leaves our world
different than before
we moved

When danger seems a looming steady state
Embrace the energy to scream and run
and channel into moving through the fear
Transmute to new found strength to persevere
To body-work at peak ‘til job is done

To push and pull, to dig, haul up, and scrub
Yield recompense for sweat and pulsing nerves
The world a little better than before
Clearer, cleaner, cared for, kept, and more
And you all terror-spent and panic-purged

Their mouths
are drooping prophets

Who've left their
salad days

Now speak in smooth
stone words

that will never
come to be

For the days
of war , famine
and pestilence

leaves one sitting
on the fence

and death
Will surely fall
to the bereft

without a course
of recompence

You stand there
as astonished

You didn't believe
the speech

When out fell the
smooth stones

of ultimate defeat