After the dinosaur, the flight, the bird.
After the Australopithecus, the slow beginning, the man.
In the first tentative feather, the albatross, the poem.
In the first chip of flint, the automobile, the rock and roll song.

I keep a jar of egg teeth, bone Venus idols, hollowed whetstones.
I shake it to time the march of progress.
It’s not an evolution unless something vanishes.
It’s not an evolution if no memory remains of the vanished.

I go sometimes
to the border
and look back to you,
to the place
I’m from,
the place
from which I’m exiled.

I want to hold your hands again.
I want to look you in the eye
and tell you I’m sorry,

for you’re lost
as I’m lost,

and I think we’d do well together,
my flooded,
impossible to drain,
tumbledown,
insolvent,
sunken-eyed, sullenly
beloved homeland.

All I wanted
was to love you, to put you
out of our shared misery,
but what I call love
you call treason;

if we can agree
that both are true,
how about
you let me come home
and prove the former
to you?