The First Day on Earth

“The beginning of Wisdom is to call things by their names”
-Chinese Proverb

I am not a poet and to prove it I present to you exhibit A, the smelly collection of steaming poop below. It could only be more like what finds drifting lazily around a toilet bowl if it had corn in it. From that description you might think I don’t like this poem (?) but that’s not true. I do like it. It’s one of my favorite things I have ever written. I just don’t think it’s very good.

A beast crawls down from the boughs and holds close to the forest floor.
Nights final hour falls.
With four legs Darwin’s Bain crawls to the edge of the African plain.
A pause splits forever as two arms stretch and reach.
A breath is stolen from the air as the Sun breaks.

Man strides out onto the amber blades of the wild savannah.
The shadows watch from the leaves of the jungle behind this new thing.
Eyes that see, eyes that catch more than the mornings light look upon the first day on Earth.

The Earth which before this dawn had no name and slept in void dreams is nowawake.
Uncounted years she held her cannibal children close to a heartless bosom and spun in reflected light. The Moon a mirror for a world in waiting.

Waiting until the time when she could christen the seas, the mountains, the beast and the green things that grow without tear or laugh of their own.

Patient slumber ended for Gaia now. Her wombs prodigy has risen and Adam, the savage Angel, is born.

Born to blaze with an unseen fire and burn with a fire to rival the Sun.
Born to tame all other flames and make them his own.
Born to give voice to the Cosmos and its finest rarest manifestation, life.
Born this day the first day on Earth.