Again the sound of quartz pounding quartz

into Neolithic spear points

to be hafted onto shafts with tree-resin glue

and a twine made of fibers harvested from dead plants

comforts me as it keeps me

awake nights, leaving me feeling equally

provided for and covered in blood.

Again history’s blistery tongue in my ear blurts

the cave of the belly goes

deeper than thought, and is less wholesome:

the vapors of the breath condense there, sour

by the hour on the walls, advancing

into pools whose surfaces strobe in archaic code

and whose depths cradle my kind of salamander.

At what point in the mud does an act of what

might be called independence become

possible is the question

on all of our limbs, not minds, not yet, although

we’re getting there bit by bit, and then

we’ll plateau for a period before gliding back

down into the huddle, dragging everything with us.

And when the future arrives in its vehicles

to poke through the mineralized

forms we leave behind, will we all be one to its eye,

or will it make a difference who

among us tried to stop ourselves, or tried to stop those

in charge, or whether any of us put their young

to sleep at the end, and if with poison, or with song?