A Short Essay on Walking

Why so many words for it?
Did we borrow them or steal them?
Stow them in the holds of ships?

Which ones marched in with the Romans?
Which ones from the tribes they fought?
Does one ever simply walk?

Don’t we all aspire to stride
or (chirpily) attempt a strut?
Don’t we swagger, even stagger,

according to the time of night.
Let’s just saunter out and dawdle.
Surely there is time to waste?

A dash will never catch this poem.
A jog is rising off the graph.
Words like stumble, lurch or limp

will come in their good time perhaps.
The waddle’s more for ducks than humans.
The tramp or trudge is best remembered

back when you were four years young,
traipsing through the CBD,
trailing from your mother’s hand.

A few prefer the verb to amble
(Latin: “ambulare”, right?),
relishing the syllables.

Why just one when four will do?
Let us then perambulate,
they severally conclude.

The Frenchified will promenade,
preceded by a pair of poodles.
The morning stroll you’re taking now

will be a shuffle soon enough,
accelerating to a scuttle
when the amber snaps to red.

And, please, let’s have no talk of dancing.
The tango? “Just another way
of walking,” J.L. Borges said.