(an answer to Roberta Monokroussos
“Was There Poetry Before People”)
there was poetry before there was anything
choreographed in dancing sub-atomic particles as
worlds condense from accretion rings around the sun
in single-celled vowels and consonants that fuse
in multi-cellular games of divide and complexify
into fractel spins of proto-vocabularies seeking
to evolve the punctuations of grammar,
where trilobites in shallow paleozoic seas
conjecture primordial screes of poetry
as editorial dragonflies flit and shimmer
their wing-drones a found-sound improvisation
of rhyme under nights of huge luminous moons,
then, during the bardic era of great reptiles
the rapid haiku-raptor outwits the
lumbering doggerel-osaurus dragging
their couplets behind them, in early scans,
before the asteroid extinction slam revises
Triassic pages with new stylistic eco-waves,
simple sonnets sparkle across global ice-sheets
reflecting altered constellations in motion
shattering in the iambic meltwater of change,
the epic tarsier and lemur oral myth-traditions
still bark and twitter amid Miocene echoes,
I hear them now, within the earth beneath my feet
there was poetry before there was anything,
opposable digits descend from the trees
to stumble high in an amazement of living,
and simply embrace the sounds of eternity
howling their wordless voice into
shockwaves around the world…
Andrew Darlington
Website: www.andrewdarlington.blogspot.com
Illustration: Claire Palmer
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Brilliant!
Comment by Jill on 12 November, 2019 at 4:26 pm