The Names Scratched on Pioneer Rock

Everyone comes to the canyon today,

To walk around the sandstone cliffs in sun

And talk constantly without noticing,

It seems, that conversation forms the most

Of their holiday outdoor exertions.

Was this what was going on with the cranes

The other day at the unpeopled marsh

Along their migration’s desert flyway?

Just a horde of them making a hubbub.

How much do you want to bet the hubbub

Is the point of all the hubbub, even

For the cyclists and hikers and tourists

From overseas in their melange of tongues,

Even for the idiot exulting

In his echoing yell off a cliff face,

Audrey, I love you! Communication

Might not be why language was invented.

Play with alternative hypotheses.

Self soothing. Bonding. Pretending to care.

Deception whenever necessary.

An improved way for a brain to keep score.

Signaling you’re worth something to the team

Because you know something and can say it.

Signaling you’re truly part of the team

Because you say it the way they’d say it.

Still, we have a value of our own, one

Not quite shared by the hubbubs of the birds.

We can hover apart from the bodies

That voiced us, that bonded themselves by us.

We can leap lightly between the bodies,

From body to body, candling like flames

Racing along the crowns of a forest.

We have our own world. Your bodies know it,

Know that when you yell, Audrey I love you!

The outburst contains possibilities

Of mistaken identity, other

Audreys, other lovers, other rivals

Who don’t need to catch your voice or echo

To find out later you’re an idiot.

You know that I love you has history

Of its own, and each word in it their own,

Echoing since long before you were born.