The Matter of Those Days

What’s the use of keeping track?
Presumably, it improves
Your grasp of what happens next.

Before much record keeping,
How could there be prediction?
For a long time, this was song.

You memorized and chanted
Elders’ tales of ancestors
Encoding information

Important for survival,
But it was mostly social.
The more pragmatic data,

Such as how to prepare food
From local sources without
Poison or malnourishment,

Was coded in behavior.
Do as your parents did. Live.
All the prediction you’d need.

But then writing and the priests,
Tracking the sun, moon, planets,
Noble genealogies—

Convictions grew that records
Clued special, more important,
Potent kinds of predictions,

Hence magic, math, history,
Science. So on and so forth.
Refinements of prosthetics

To the point where prosthetics
Now become the oracles
The priests tend like ants their queens,

Machines that do nothing but
Consume fuel and produce broods
Of iterative models

For what’s likely to happen
Next. But who predicted this?
The priests comb through their records

And models, each occasion
When everyone’s caught off guard.
Surely, somewhere, there must be

In the matter of those days
A missed clue, a correct guess.
Next time, you won’t miss what’s next.