Begin

(2016)

Over thirty-two-thousand years ago

in Southern France above the Ardeche river

underneath a limestone cliff

inside the Chavvet Caves

the luminous souls of our ancestors were captured

in drawings on the stone.

In that place of deep, dark silence

layer upon layer, outside of time,

bound by space, a community painted

of human, of bison and mammoth, bear

eyes fixed on the observer, and the sweating

flanks of horse herds. Except film or photographs,

those of us here now may never see it.

Nonetheless, we are the traces of this story.

Non-literate, seeded pre-temple, pre-Ur,

Kish, Lagash, rising up from mud lands

of the Tigris-Euphrates, we measure

by celestial spheres; from Sun and Moon to Pluto.

Moved forward through the telling of lamas,

sheiks, shamans, rishis, rabbis, and Rinpoche,

we are poets, artists, and mystics.

A mythic coupling

that started with a fearful, lonely I am.

A creation, a cosmos, pouring forth

from old Melanesia, to cross ice,

to walk the earth, to overcome fear

and unite I am to I am, and at last

to become vulnerable.