Let There Be Effort

Life was a pump. Not a fire,
Not a vortex, surely not
An architect's library,

But a pump with a filter,
Priming the iterations
Of hunger and preference,

Of selection and symbol
And arguments about life.
A pump that squeezed energy

Out of its hiding places
In boring clusters of things,
That hauled in and then spit out

What before had only burned,
Blown, or tumbled to a stop.
Not, first, the word. First, a pump.