As dolphins drift near the water’s surface
with half of your brain awake, ever vigilant,
the other half asleep in dreamless rest,
echolocate to the warm green of the Eocene
where the Tethys Sea dissolves 50 million years.
Early whales roam the river delta of the Punjab,
long before the Himalayas climbed the sky.
As pakicetids, you could hear underwater
before your legs became fins, your tail became flukes.
With no humans and their nets to entangle,
the wolves with whales’ ears evolve
from foraging the land and freshwater shallows
to ambulocetids, furry crocodiles comfortable in brackish water
to dorudons with fins and tiny, hind legs,
aquanauts breaching the salty oceans of the world
from Egypt to verdant Antarctica to the Americas.
Echoes of evolution flow through deep time
when past and present meet. Near the river's surface,
dolphins drift in dreamless sleep, half-awake with one eye open
while on shore, pakicetids dream nestled in the sedges of the Punjab.