Lucy

Late day shadows crawl across the gorge,
each inch the measure of a thousand years.
What brought you here, my little one, to me
out of your bed of sandstone and debris
and dusky midden, maiden of a far time?

You bear no souvenirs, no farewell gift
bestowed on you by her who mothered you,
or him who loved you. But your blank stone eyes
and mute and rounded skull cap testify
to more than placement on a fossil line

of ancestry. What joys moved in you,
what dreams beyond the grasslands caught your heart?
When sunlight sparkles on the distant peak
of Kilimanjaro, do you try to speak
of how you loved the sun, or do you turn

back to remembered trees' enfolding green,
up out of grasslands to their canopy
closer to heaven, out of Olduvai
to seek the stars we seek? Lucy, in the sky
the diamond constellations wheel and burn

and still we look for something past ourselves.
Now we will chivy nature from her cells,
unravel frog and fruit-fly chromosome -
and you, the fruit of patience and of dust -
we'll recreate you, strand by patient strand.

Lucy, I fear us. Let me hold your hand,
and, Mother of all, Grandmother:

Lead me home.