Footwork …

… Counting Feet: On Running and Poetic Meter | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The strange analogy between running feet and poetic rhythm goes deeper than the mere units that we try to find in poems. The English word “foot” can be traced back to the Latin words pes and ped, and the corresponding Greek words pous and pod (think “podiatry”). Slugs and snails have the taxonomic label of gastropods, “stomach-feet,” because of their strange physiological arrangements.