I am a scarred animal

That exists upon an echelon

where others never dream to tread along.

I am nohbdy.

My knowledge is mostly selfdrawn,

a headstrong hedgehog couldn’t dredge a hole to where my head’s gone:

Buried in the sand by the remnants of the grass the ancients stepped on.

If I was an object, I’m the opposite of Teflon.

Everything sticks like the web the spider sits on.

I trap myself like the moth drawn to light or a fly caught.

Animals, like echelons, are only steps in a ladder.

We end up dead in a larder, or buried in a funeral.

Just another rung in a ladder that knows the face of a million dawns

And the face of a million moons.

We, the steps, have our paths to choose.

I, the scared animal, run in circles still confused.

I don’t know my place in the ladder

Or does the ladder have no place for me.

The latter seems the more possible.

But if there’s no place for me, no step for my dream?

Do we need the ladder after all?

It existed then and might exist again, but don’t all ladders end?

I step off the ladder, and find others here beside me.

The nohbdy I was can become the somebody I am

I jumped from the chasm and ignored their commands

Now they want us back, but we shout “why?”

They say “the ladder isn’t finished?”

In unison we say, “Then you build it!”