Friday, May 17, 2013

Mammoths and Mastodons


Global Warming

A huge curved tusk in the muck of a pond
a stone spear point and mastodon bones
dug up in suburbia:
bones and tools from ancient days
lie under our freeways
football stadiums and homes.

After Ice Age glaciers melted away
mammoths and mastodons browsed the land
pursued by humans with stone spears.
Surely the people gazed up at the North Star,
traveled, gathered, hunted, survived.
Their children laughed and played in
parkas, leggings, boots
their mothers sewed for them
with bone needles: in short,
survival gear.

Trout-teeming melt water from glaciers
gushed and gashed the land and
tranquil mastodons grazed
Michigan’s lush green landscape.
Our mitten holds memories
of ancient times.
If only stones could speak.

excerpted from Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below



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