What I Disliked about the Pleistocene Era

The pastries were awfully dry.

An absence of hummingbirds –

of any humming, and birds’ lead

feathers made it difficult to fly.

Clouds had not yet learned

to clot, billow, represent.

Stars unshot, anonymous.

Moon and sun indifferent.

No one owned a house, a pond,

a rock on which to rest your head.

No arc, no here then there. Beginning

meant alive. The end was dead.

Art still a ways away – no lyre.

Beauty, an accident. Needs

and wants bundled like twigs

then set on fire. Except, no fire.

Candles had no wicks. Fruit

lacked seed. Books bereft of plot.

Ornament and condiment

were empty cisterns. There were pots.

It was pure act. No motivation,

consequence, imagination.

Sometimes, a flare, a glow, a gleam.

No questions asked. No revelation.

And I was not yet capital I.

Still just an eye. No mouth,

no verb, no AM to carry dark

from day, dirt or sea from sky –

God not God until one dove

called out “where the hell’s dry land?”

An answer formed. A raven shrugged

and toed a line across the sand.

New, the sand. New, the vast

notion of this long division.

New, the understanding that
this time, there would be no revision.