i.
Were new stones used to carve
Lasting reminders on the cave walls?
Not mammoth slaying spears of legend
Nor tribe-conquering cudgels
Was blood the first hue?
At the cue for color
What woman first took to the hard walled world
With four deft strokes a man appears
Arms outstretched
In joy? Crying out as a babe?
In the thigh-pressed cradle of man
Such a mirror of joy
Seen in the fleshy gates to life
Long before any pearly gates appeared
Swirly gates in the ocean steered
What hands took to the world and scrawled,
“I was here”
In a time before words
Before divine embarrassment
Primordial ordeals
Before man, a woman
Before woman, time and rock and dust
Pulled and wove and carved and cured
To make the cradle of man
Safe at the center
ii.
A sun
A son
A whole system of life revolving
Evolving
People passing and whirling, surrounding
Any soul can say where they’re from
Leave a hand print on a wall
Carve an effigy
For all the world to see
Embracing your home
Reach towards the skies
Scrawl out the shadow
Of the mud of the clay
What a force of joy to see in the world
A reflection of life
“You are here”
“You were here”
Locked eyes across millennium
In the dawn, with a stone
Looked at you and saw within
The malleable world,
Stone and mallet in hand
Themselves at your root
In life’s first cradle