Tag Archives: anthropology

THE DOG OF CHAUVET CAVE

THE DOG OF CHAUVET CAVE

 

Only one.

Painted in yellow ochre,

her black eyes shine with calcite.

Her teats are distended with milk, 

her curved tail suggests motion.

You wouldn’t notice her.

Indeed, she was not noticed 

for years since she is small,

overshadowed by the horses,

the lions and bulls;

since she was not officially domestic

for another twenty thousand years.

Beneath her, in the dust,

a fragment of mammoth bone.

Painted above her head, 

a single handprint,

again in the yellow.

A small hand, carefully placed,

poised as if to caress.

STREET DANCE–and the process

I wrote this last year. The finished poem, if a poem is ever “finished” is the first one. It’s followed by the rough draft and various revisions.

 

STREET DANCE

We have not come so far;

we are so close to home—

our brains—those soft machines— 

still live in caves of bones. 

There are bears among the stones.

Everyone knows how to dance—

the woman twirling in her short skirt,

her partner in his green shirt,

those flirting girls, 

old people and their little dogs,

the children in their wild cavort.

 

 

how I got there:

 

STREET DANCE

At sunset, young animals 

make ephemeral alliances 

and run and run.

Human children here are doing that now

while adults dance, or watch,

or play in the band.

Everyone knows how to dance,

even the people sitting in the folding chairs

chatting, eating ice cream.

Mostly it works, 

what we do. Even though

we’re too far away.

We think we’re here, 

but our brains—

those soft machines—

still live in caves of bones.

A tiger behind every tree.

We need mates, enough space

to gather and hunt and defend.

Our children.

Bands of brothers. 

A powerful sisterhood.

Sharp memory of every fear.

The gods need room 

to speak to us—

they leave spaces in our skulls.

If the gods are gone

we fill the holes ourselves.

What will become of us—

these children in their wild cavort,

the woman twirling in her short skirt

and her partner in his green shirt,

those flirting girls, the old people

in their baseball hats, sitting

on the benches in front of the post office,

holding their little dogs 

or resting their hands on their canes.

July 17, 2017

 

STREET DANCE

Consider: our brains—those soft machines— 

still live in caves of bones. We need 

mates, children, enough space to gather and hunt. 

There are bears among the stones, panthers in the trees.

We remember every fear. The gods 

need room to speak to us.

If the gods are gone we fill the holes ourselves.

 

At sunset, young animals make ephemeral alliances 

and run and run. Human children 

are running together now while adults

dance, or watch, or play in the band.

Everyone knows how to dance,

even the people in the folding chairs

eating ice cream. Eating ice cream

is another way of dancing.

 

What will become of us—

the woman twirling in her short skirt,

her partner in his green shirt,

those flirting girls, the old people on the benches 

in front of the post office, holding their little dogs 

or resting their hands on their canes.

Our children in their wild cavort.

August 28, 2017

 

STREET DANCE

We have not come so far;

we are so close to home—

our brains—those soft machines— 

still live in caves of bones. 

There are bears among the stones.

Human children in their tribes

hunt across the green.

We all know how to dance—

the woman twirling in her short skirt,

her partner in his green shirt,

those flirting girls, 

old people holding little dogs 

or resting their hands on canes.

Young primates in their wild cavort.

undated  but with the comment: (Fairly soon, there will be no poem left.)

 

STREET DANCE

We have not come so far;

we are so close to home—

our brains—those soft machines— 

still live in caves of bones. 

 

STREET DANCE

We are so close to home—

our brains—those soft machines— 

still live in caves of bones. 

September 14

THE OLD LADY DISCOVERS FACEBOOK AND OFFERS A SORT OF APOLOGY

THE OLD LADY DISCOVERS FACEBOOK

AND OFFERS A SORT OF APOLOGY

All you want to do

is touch.  It used to be easy,

while winnowing grain or stalking beasts.

Your bodies remember 

the smell of sweat in the longhouse,

gossip by the well, 

embraces under the trees.

   

Once you spoke while hanging wash

or mending nets or minding babies

or scything hay or boiling sap

or making shoes or spinning thread

or pounding nails or stitching quilts.

Now

you are scattered like chaff,

dispersed as hunted game,

 

and so are we.    

 

Oh, children, do not complain at us!

We are as exiled as you.

Like you we want to find our friends

and digging is so hard.

Disembodied

as you, we post lines 

and flickers to our tornaway tribes.  

Now the ether carries in bits

our sketchy sentences, our loneliness,

tears that this strange communication

without skin or breath can maybe begin to mend.

 

I wrote this years ago, when I first joined facebook. Now that I’ve deleted my account, I find  it intriguing that this was the original intent.

OLD GODS

OLD GODS

Eventually everyone abandons

old gods. The Romans did, the Greeks, the Goths.

Poor Jupiter, sad Gaut— swallowed like Metis,

or like Persephone, exiled underground.

Great Pan is dead. There is nothing new under

Helios, or Ra, or any ball

of burning gas. Old gods, all gods, are

nothing but constructions of finitude.

What is, defies each attempt. Even

the atheists fail, their ridicule grasping

straw. But still, transcending all the light

of each imagined form, outlying limits

of sense–that surface of last scattering—

there is nothing but a kindlier dark.

WHAT I DID AFTER YOU LEFT HOME

WHAT I DID AFTER YOU LEFT HOME

Went to New Orleans,

walked alone in the early morning.

They were opening windows,

washing down the streets.

Are you ready, M’am?

An old man stood on the cobblestones,

beaming in the steaming light.

He held reins in one crinkled hand,

extended the other to me.

His brown horse shook its head, bells rang.

Ready?  For what?

 

Are you ready for a buggy ride?

I had not planned to act like a tourist,

but how could I do otherwise

in this unexpected land, this place I’ve never seen?

The people sitting above the tall red wheels

were talking and laughing together

like people in a painting, or a play.

The driver cocked his head, waiting for my answer.

I asked the cost.

There was no reason to refuse.

 

I placed my damp white hand in his,

my hand with the split lifeline,

the single crack foretelling a single child.

Twenty years ago a sibyl read my palm:

You’ll live long, but two lives, different.

You’re a musician.  And try not to be so stingy.

Yes of course I’m ready, I told him.

Boost me up.

 

You, I’m afraid, would have been

disdainful, cool.  You would not

have approved of me,

sweating in my purple dress,

gawking, singing along,

leaning out behind the horse’s bobbing feathered head

above the spinning wheels

in that impressionistic light.

 

I felt a city dawn that day,

saw men in stiletto heels and black stockings 

prancing down the shining sidewalks,

artists reaching for long moist shadows,

women like statues, painted gold.

The city smelled like fresh coffee,

sour beer, things frying in lard.

On every bright wet corner

were little children, dancing.

 

 

I wrote this a long time ago, in response to the Empty Nest. It ended up being a performance piece.

 

March 24–November 16, 1999;  Jan. 30–April 20, 2001

Quatrain Chapbook:   Sing in me, Muse, Feb. 2005

April Prompts #25: HOARDINGS

April Prompts #25  HOARDINGS

Kari’s #3:  people with animal or insect characteristics

 

HOARDINGS

 

Under the eaves,

in an abandoned robin’s nest,

a flying squirrel stashes mushrooms.

 

Chipmunks carry acorns,

sunflower seeds, kernels of corn

to hoard in their holes under the garage.

 

Cherry pits

in the mitten basket,

behind the cookbooks.

 

Between the rafters

dog kibble

piled in fiberglass nests.

 

In the freezer,

blueberries and broccoli,

applesauce and greens.

 

On the shelves,

jars of pickles, pails of honey,

bottles of water, cans of beans.

TO THE PLASTER PEOPLE

TO THE PLASTER PEOPLE

 

Plaster People

Wipe Feet!

Do not go in Gallery!!

Clean up downstairs

and exit Out Back

—sign in the hallway outside sculpture studio, Castleton State College

 

Among the paintings,

installations of true Art

the Plaster People blunder,

powdery tracks wrecking

the good carpet,

powdery fingerprints

defacing all that is

canonical and clear.

 

One can’t have them

scattering their dust,

clouds and billows,

the stuff of stars.

 

The Plaster People in their

poofy hordes trample

up from the foundations.

They have buried

every civilization in turn.

Oh, look on their creative

struction, and despair!

 

A friend who teaches at Castleton hung this sign up in the Arts Center there.

TO LUCY

TO LUCY

Australopithecus afarensis

 

1.

I sit on the bones of my pelvis

wondering if you looked into my eyes

you’d see an explanation,

a daughter you’d recognize.

 

You would know me by my hands adept with tools.

You’d hear me singing with my friends,

watch me bounce my baby nephew on my knee.

You could meet me on a summer morning,

help me gather arnica and goosefoot greens.

 

So much I want to know of you:

did you fish for termites, crack nuts, chew leaves,

pull strips of flesh from antelopes and birds?

Did you awaken stiff and scared from twitching dreams?

I would tell you that when I wake from mine,

I remember my Nana’s lullabies;

I want to know if someone sang for you.

 

What did you make of your life?

What did you understand?

When it came your time to die, were you afraid?

Were you surprised?

 

2.

Your Great Rift Valley was a careless archivist:

in her sandstone house she stashed

scrapbooks of mysteries,

a trunk of discarded fashions.

She tossed the crumbled pages

of your story in the river, to the wind.

 

Some artist made a grinning baby

of that ball of bones

from Afar’s nipple-pointed hills:

knees, milk teeth, tiny toes,

one finger curled, brown skull

returning from the dust.

 

3.

Through dust of volcanoes

on feet like mine your people walked.

 

I would like to walk

into your landscape:

the yellow grass and scrub,

the seeps and gullies of home.

 

In this cold land of glacial till

and blue lake bottom clay

I press my feet into ground,

footbones with their musical names:

talus, calcaneus, cuboid, navicular,

cuneiform, metatarsal, infantry of phalanges.

 

Across years and continents

these bones have arched their way.

 

Southern Ape from Afar,

where have we arrived,

our footprints everywhere?

 

We trail white vapor through the skies;

broken machines encircle us,

the crawling increase of our kind.

We’ve made our own volcanic air.

Our children are sorted into rooms,

our babies lie crying, all alone.

 

We make beautiful and deadly tools.

Our music would break your heart.

Our lives shatter, our bones come apart.

 

4.

Brooding over you, I dreamed

I lost my way.  I stopped

at a café where they were butchering

a road-kill fawn.  A baby escaped

from my suitcase. I had to walk

home in the dark and I could

not find my shoes.

 

5.

My journals are out of order,

unsorted letters in shoeboxes.

Unnamed ancestors smile in sepia.

In one musty drawer I keep an envelope

with two baby teeth, a cheap bracelet,

my grandmother’s amber beads.

 

Now that I am old,

I need a Nana most of all

to sit with in the dappled shade,

to speak of things encrypted

under layers of language,

this endless chatter in my enormous brain.

 

6.

I cannot look too long

in any eyes.  Before I see

the hawk, I feel its gaze.

There is something wholesome

in the taste of green.

I lie awake when the moon is full

and when the moon is new.

I remember where the plums

and wild asparagus grow.

Even now I know by smell

when the snow will come.

 

7.

How hard, to evolve,

walk down across the land,

feel the twinges of selection:

bones growing longer,

speech changing the brain.

All around the world is turning,

brown and yellow and green.

Stars change the sky.

Do you remember?

Did you know?

Out of time, you walk with me

toward an Earth

as strange and familiar

as that house I sometimes dream

where once we lived,

that house I’ve never seen.                                          .

 

 

 

~ for Barbara J. King 

July 5, 2007

NATURE CALLING

NATURE CALLING

 

An old one, written back when we had the first airedale, who died in 1996.

 

Civilization will not allow for instinct:

no dinners of raw mice,

no clawing the eyes of enemies,

no mating

or defecating in the public streets.

 

Often, the dog scenting dog, coyote, fox

–something pungent,

instructive, on a tuft of grass–

will turn against my call, ponder, consider,

squat to make her mark.

 

One morning, as I walked

between red cedars, young pines,

stooped to move between low branches,

to follow a mossy path worn deep by wild feet,

I felt an insistent urge to pee.

 

So there it was:

a seizure by immediate beauty

–light filtered through dark pines–

compelling me to say in the simplest way I could,

my animal way,

 

I was here.  

This place is mine.