What whales are now began on land – the shores

of Pakistan – and slowly shed hind legs,

resorbed as relict stubs of bone that float

inside the body, cartilage as memory

that returns in freaks when genes that code for lost

traits have been retained; but front limbs grew

to pectoral fins, DNA scrimps, so that what

already existed was co-opted to new use –

fossil genes that remain, beached, a dream

of a shape beneath the water’s surface,

long snout, feet webbed, that trawls ashore, snorts

air and rests beside the river, lake or marsh –

as it dries the pelt is wet with sun. Today,

this first fathered day of spring, blossoms fall, and seeds.