Gracile Australopithecus: November 1974 Offered in atonement these few small bones meant nothing but salvation: a kind of anthropological grace held in a trembling hand. Mired in a bed of river dust pillowed between rocks and sheets of clay ancestral arthropods led us on. Before the fire we danced and drank and repeated the music each rote word a triumph in our mind each note ingrained. Under the brilliant carpet of heaven deep in the musk of canvas sweat and kerosene we leaped with the flame our shadows racing home our footprints close behind.
The Science Creative Quarterly
By ruthewalker
Ruth\'s poetry and fiction has appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada, the UK and the US. She is a founding editor for LICHEN Arts & Letters Preview, and lives (and writes) in Whitby, Ontario.
An earlier version of this poem was published in 1998 in \"Archnotes\" the magazine of the Ontario Archeology Association