Red ochre cave painting from Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, France, 15,000 to 18,000 BCE
I won’t call this poetry-rather the story of man’s journey from his ancestral home in Africa.
Out of The Land
From the mist in creation’s time
There came a creature called Man,
who left the land that cradled him
And taught him how to walk and hunt,
To fashion tools from shattered stones,
To make the fire be his servant
And he journeyed onwards to the
farthest corners of all his realm.
He looked around in his world
And wondered who was the father of his kind.
He gazed upon the mountains and the sea and land
And in a vision saw shadows and called
Them spirits of creation.
He glanced at the golden disk in the sky
And the guardian of the night and his servants,
And he venerated them as Gods.
He parted from his primal cave
Where deep within an image of a shaman’s hand
And visions of his hunt is on the wall,
And there, where once the beast ran free
He he tamed the land and called it his.
He tilled the primeval soil and planted seeds,
And bargained with his former prey to be the Master
of a few of this abundant ilk.
The vernal solstice, exalted through the eons,
And mighty stones he set to greet the power.
His art in flint had found a true distinction
When this man of dawn came into light of day.
With mated ores, gifts of past creations,
He fashioned tools that mirrored those of yore.
But yellow glints in this, his newfound power,
Cast lights upon his destined road.
And kindred clans of few made tribes of many,
The races claimed and mastered lands of far.
A creature image wrought by skill of hand and
Priestly essence, nourished needs of rumination.
They made their Gods of life and death
Fecundity and harvest and offered to the
Credence of their cult the blood of beasts
and Brethren children
or the heart of captured foes.
Kenny
(All rights reserved)
