Cultural Evolution Reaches the Swamps

By means of temporal coincidences
Of newly available technologies,

The coelacanths of insight have heaved themselves
Into shallower and shallower waters

Chasing resources, finally arriving,
More or less tetrapodal and gulping air,

On the open shores of opportunity.
In the wetsuits of their clumsy, fishy flesh,

Flat-headed and low to the ground, they’ve only
Needed to be quick enough to snap up thoughts

Never before consumed by such lunged monsters.
It will get harder. Predatory ideas

Already diversify. Hard to conceive
Now, but a few lumbering notions will fly.

In the meantime, there’s warm mud and scorpions
And edible dreams by the shoreline, and time

Metes itself in days and nights that will never
Go by this swiftly again. It may chart late

In the long crawl of entropy-defying,
Hungry life, but it’s early. It’s not the end.