Seems like we'd just started to make tools,
to bury our dead so predators couldn't eat them.
Didn't we domesticate animals just yesterday?
Wasn't it only a month or so ago we first hollowed
out grindstones? Didn't we just master pottery?
It all happened so fast. How long since we first
learned to herd camels, since we figured out how
deliciously wind fills the bellies of sails? Didn't we
start carving figurines only recently, the ones
we hang round our necks, little pocket gods to rub
when we're scared? Feels like we raced straight
from clay tablets to parchment to paperbacks
in a day. Invented medicines along the way.
First danced to bring rain yesterday. Minted
coins only lately, money playing no small role
in our downfall. I read that a jellyfish's brains whirl
in her skirts, that plants are really slow, rooted
animals, that elephants dig their own wells. Who
begat this miraculous world, shaped from nothing
but sunlight and mud? Who let loose that universal
music, more lovely than anything made by the hand
of man, that sometimes arrives out of silence?
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