Rather Recently in Earth’s History

Unless you like reading about it,
You probably don’t know just how weird
Life on Earth probably was back when.

For instance, and this is just the one
Of many for-instances out there,
Under the dirt of Wales are layers

Of formerly Southern Hemisphere,
Four-hundred thirty million years old,
Post-Cambrian, pre-Devonian.

Earth spun faster, days and nights were quick,
Oxygen lower but rising, then.
Sex was happening, but birds and bees,

Even lizards were a long way off.
There weren’t any woody plants on land,
No giant dragonflies or scorpions yet.

(Those evolved drenched in oxygen
So dense they didn’t need lungs
To grow big as today’s hawks and dogs,

But their heady days were also far,
Far in the future for the thinner
Atmosphere of the Silurian.)

The land along that coast was covered
Not with trees or ferns, much less grasses,
But with items vaguely resembling

Crosses between great termite towers,
Stone obelisks, and today’s morels,
Phallic fungi four times human height.

For you, their Earth would be alien,
More so than your fantasy planets,
And then, you’d be just as alien,

But all that it took was time—rhythmic,
Cyclical, pulsing, oscillating,
Spinning, orbiting repetitions,

Plus the occasional disruptive
Change not to be confused with such clocks.
Now here you are, digging into Wales,

First for coal and later for science,
Peering at these alien layers
And finding the charcoal where they burned.

Authority

You don’t cage the animal,
You don’t reinforce the cage,
Work at improving daily

The steel durability,
Management technology,
Exact confines of the cage,

Unless you’re afraid, unless
You know you’re vulnerable
To whatever’s in the cage.

What

Something about the way ants move
Makes them always seem exploring—

Pan miners, scientists, poets,
Little drunks who’ve lost their wallets.

At least three species race along
This lake’s rocky shores in summer,

Attending to all sorts of tasks
Among the washed up logs and sticks,

And they all look urgent, but not like
People rushing to work, not like

The thoroughly foraging bees—
More like they’re looking for something,

Maybe unsure of what it is,
Like the whole shore needs exploring,

The way the universe explores
Every last possibility

But—being creatures, being lives—
Without the offhand luxury

Of changing rates of exploring,
Exploring all possible rates

Of exploring that the cosmos
Savors. Every ant’s behavior

Seems paced at the same frantic speed.
Something needs to be found, something

That is absolutely crucial,
But we’re all running out of time.

Immortal Speech

Between the earliest pictographs

And Edison’s team demonstrating

The first version of the phonograph

Lay the in-between generations

Of history in which speech could be

Noted down but not preserved as heard.

Now professors have audiobooks,

Not dictated but written, then read

Back to them by voice professionals.

Speech has become immortal, announced

The Scientific American

After Edison’s demonstration,

Nine decades before Arthur C. Clarke

Ruled any sufficiently advanced

Technology (what’s sufficiently?)

Indistinguishable from magic.

The Edison team’s first phonograph

Actually proved something rather

Different—that it’s not how advanced

The technology, but how novel.

Tech’s distinguishable from magic

But, until the tech’s sufficiently

Familiar, it does seem magical—

Just as magic, incidentally,

Even real, would seem impossible

Only until made common enough

To be a daily technology,

As misunderstood as all the rest.

It wasn’t more than a century

From the first phonograph cylinder

To golden records shot into space.

So, is speech now truly immortal?

That’s just a rhetorical question,

Of course. Speech is less evanescent

In well-recorded circumstances,

But it depends on the medium.

Everything depends on, everything

Itself is, some kind of medium.

Before bits coded for sound or print,

Before analog grooves dug through wax,

Before quill and ink blotted paper,

Before caves were splattered with ochre,

The human brain served as medium,

Speech and gestures as the transmission

Means to store more immortals in brains.

Languages invented immortals,

Each and every immortality

That technologies have pretended.

Reflect

Every time we gather ourselves,
We ponder whether fresh matter
Lies here, or just a light echo

Expanding from an earlier
Flash, reflecting off ambient
Dust from one authentic burst.

There are so many, many stars
That supernovas tick like clocks,
Rare as they are, whereas echoes

Of light off a complex array
Of interstellar matter are
Comparatively rarer still,

Given there’s no explanation
Yet for the original flash.

Outside Last Night

What is it you want to survive?
The next moment? The next decade?
All the octogenarians

Who still get up and go to work?
Why? You won’t make it to the end
Of the stars you saw past midnight,

When you woke up from dreams of flight,
Of trying to not let goodbyes
Make you too late to catch your plane,

As if dreams or the surrounding
Night, or all the myriad lights
Burning gravely, kept to schedules.

Since you shouldn’t have been awake,
It was striking to stand outside.

How You Join the Mob

Earth bred humans to be vicious
In constantly reforming groups.
As war and cooperation
Elaborate, what will you do

With yourself, seeking groups, telling
Yourself to whom you should belong?
Ah, don’t worry. It’s hard to tell
Yourself, but the groups will tell you.