Homo Neanderthalensis

by James Brush

 Homo Neanderthalensis by James Brush 

Old teeth still talk. Shards of bone and flint
blades found in Spanish caves, scraps
of DNA unravel the edges of a story—
a sentence from which to divine an epic.
What tales did these other humans tell
when their cousins came north, surrounded
them and built a new world full of strangers?
Did they know their time had come? Did they
dance with ghosts and worry about decline?
Did they imagine other isolated outposts of their kind
lonely and encircled also by these wise interlopers?
I would like to have known them, and I wonder
how the world would be if there were still
mirror humans, living in a shadow world,
hunters stalking slopes alongside us,
mysterious as strange footprints in the snow.
The sun must still have risen and set, ice receded
as the world shrank down to just a range,
a hill, a cave. Is this the way of age, this shrinking
of the landscape until we wander no farther
than the yard, puttering around our piece of earth,
no longer wondering (and just a little afraid of)
what lies beyond the blue gray mountains?  




With Thanks From: https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com