Why and who, I wonder, wrote that first poem?
It was hard enough to move from gesture
To grunts, howls, inventing the lyric thrums
Of myriad language—words, rich and pure!
Without words, we pointed at stones, waved hands.
Movement filled with meaning—“bring that thing here!”
Then words emerge, soon complex talk expands,
But unborn writing won’t be birthed for years.
Thus memory contrived fine mnemonic
Tools that rendered contracts, songs, sales and tales
In metered rhyming verse, formal sonics—
Dactylics, iambs, anapests—firm wails—
That lodged in memory ‘till we transcribed
Those strange sounds to writing, reading—inscribed
On parchment, hieroglyphed, chiseled on stones—
Tangible contracts and glorious poems.
(1/26/14)