Long before still images gathered into reels,
faked and raked movement across canvas screens,
before our minds grew magnetic, and we unfurled
how the unseen tether held Earth to its satellite,
and polished silver appliances skated from
open-mouthed factories, and oven-baked bricks
mirrored unshaven bi-pedal ambition,
our cave-dwelling stencil footprint grazed along
wildfire-lit walls, grew into centuries blossomed
with hieroglyphs where meru log boats and reed
ships oiled with bronzed-back oarsmen plied
aged seas in half, reaching Tyre and other
hoary-named lapsed lands flung to the known-world’s
ends, and returned soaking with Nile sun, cattle,
wares, and slaves. Long before we chipped sandstone
for spearheads on this winged orb where there is a
place on the page for everyone to create their own hue,
our hands reached where stone sparked
the ground’s thermal layers, and lumps
of pyrite ignited bullets through wheellock
pistols and the brass brazzle luster of cocked guns
sang with firecracker staccato, and well before
the butcher’s stick knife turned pig to ham
and we dried crystalline stinging sea salt to preserve,
pickle, cure, and smoke-hang animal flesh, before
the anthology of constellations and running down
savannah prey, there was a terrene syllable which
grabbed the first carved domino, and firmed it in place.