I went to an astronaut’s lecture
about orbiting the earth
at seventeen thousand
five hundred miles per hour.
You had to be a PhD or close for that shuttle berth –
a scientist at the apogee of your power.
First-timers on the craft – astrophysicists
and geologists – masters and amassers
of knowledge and facts – looked below and said
in awe: The lay of waters and land is familiar!
The earth – she looks just like our maps!
But the earth came first, maps next. The earth was first.
My neighbor’s Concord grape vines
scaled her backyard fence,
dangling picture-book bunches
I picked as I walked in the alley.
After a taste I told everyone
They’re grape-y and sharp like grape soda!
They taste like purple Tootsie Pops and Starbursts.
But… before flavored soda and candies, actual grapes came first.
The earth preceded maps.
Grapes came before “grape flavor.”
The earth and grapes came first.
That seems to matter.
In a crowd of sparrows I saw one raise
a wing straight out to the side.
Like an arm – it was conspicuous and funny.
It resembled a cartoon bird, ready to say Hello…
But birds came first, before cartoons.
They weren’t sketched into being.
So the earth preceded maps.
Grapes came before grape flavor.
Before cartoonists drew, birds flew.
Priority seems to matter.
Yet before the earth, gases swirled – dramatically –
then cooled. Motes and dust coalesced,
and then we had a globe. Mysterious assemblies
of cells arrived – algae and mosses primeval.
Then trees, grapes; birds and thinking
apes… which is us erect on two legs asking
which came first – the chicken or the egg?
