Signal Event

What hand turned that flint cobble?
The first to search out a place to strike
Where best to unleash
An understanding
Of the furnace of the sun

Where to begin that journey
That long steady walk
From Africa's great rift
To plodding steps
On the overarching Moon

In searching out that razors edge
Did Man provoke an annunciation?
Did Angels promise chemistry
To bind with pitch
That sharpened stone to shaft?
Or aerodynamic magic to fletch that stave
With biology's best choice?

Or did God wait
With bated breath
To see where this would go?
And did His faith in Man
Withhold the Angels prod,
Knowing full well
That Man would turn to Him
If He would but provide an hour of need?

I love this poem, Hack, cracks in our Earth, those in our hearts... and He/She/It does without us as it looks, needing, perhaps, some more successful Kind, elsewhere, having left us all alone, in the vastness of Creation, to our total inutility? or might it be that we have not yet realised we were independent and - creators ourselves.

This is just an excellent poem. I could see the "historical" progression as well as feel it as I read the poem. And the philosopical undertones and questions are there without really intruding and dominating--which would have marred the poem if they had. The ending is simply astounding.

How magisterially this proceeds through its several impassioned but elegantly stated questions until it reaches

If He would but provide an hour of need?

a statement that is somehow at one and the same time a tribute to the Deity and a condemnation of Him/Her/It. Bravo!

Thank you for your reads and comments Bar, Jermac, and My Prince. This came from one of my walks in the desert where I found a small imperfect arrowhead. It made me think that the very first worked stone tool is likely still intact beneath who knows how much dirt somewhere in East Africa. Unlike almost everything that I have written, the title came first.