We Tossed the Stones Away

11,000 years ago or so we

Homo Sapiens and a cousin or two

tossed the stones away

stepped out of a hard age

Traded scrabbled ground

for soft hay mattresses and bed bugs

found gold and formed ornaments

discovered cooper in our fire pits

then fashioned pots

forged metals into weapons

whipped our cousins out.

Today our bedding has a memory or two

gold fills the fashionable astronaut’s space suit

discovered pot has traces of copper in it

harnessed the fire power of the sun

found we, Homo Sapiens can make gold

we maybe God after all.

Know, not just passing of time

or birth of 440 generations or so

accounts for all that has happened

from application of Homo Sapiens’ hand.

The having of time, the idled mind

allowing neurons to fire, to think, to solve

allowing us to do more than merely evolve.

Reflections on Process:

This poem was part of a 30 Day Poetry Challenge (Day 14) on Medium.com The topic Stepping out of the Stone Age woke up my idled mind. I had to do some homework-okay, lots of homework. The research reminded me how much I love looking back at prehistoric times, and thinking about how we first figured out how to “figure out.”

The book The Hand by Frank R Wilson (1999) had a big influence on my insights into how we Homo Sapiens worked our way out of the stone age and ended up picking up rocks on the Moon and now Mars.

The poem has been edited and revised--evolved so to speak--for vocal.media