~MASTERS OF THE MIMIC
~Devonian Fossils, Unfettered~

We forget, or refuse to remember, our worth.
And so we are, faute de mieux¹,
masters (monsters) of the mimic.
It is how we begin.

Not as unique murals of the sublime.
Nor details, oblique twists into new metaphors,
life-givers, revolutionaries spilling wild wonders
with our antennae and claws.

No.  We tend to forego dignity
as the birthright only of older things.
Instead, we sing of shallow geneses
and choke in the poison they bring.

But further in, farther down, 
the clouded lady walks, keeper of the keys,
dropper of freedom in the deep, dulcet dark.
She fills the passageways with a silent tumult.
Her grey eyes, gentle though,
are pithy.  She will not be abated
with bribes or taunts — yet revels in
the liberty she haunts.

We are the things she celebrates.
Her finger hushes our bewilderment,
her nod indicates the ability she’s given us
to free ourselves.
Our voices signal.
With the rush of her robes,
she listens; she knows, we are able to
hold our own no matter our doubt.

“Follow no man”, is etched in the lock.
“Wisdom whispers amid the clamor
of ignorance; —
                                  Listen.”

The key, her key, only fits when
our lullabies convey that Love is 
like light (a flash, a wave, a particle of might) —
so indefinable, so urgent
nothing can live outside it.
Then our voices sync to the echoes of
the seas that wash against
the walls of rock surrounding us.

We can hear the crowding ocean lift our
wings (or fins, I never can tell which
at this point; — it alters so subtly
till the sacred rush of change sets in).
Then the hush of adaptations grows wild.
The lure of air filters through our gills
until some of them turn inward.
Bone-white devices temper the ache of 
molecular innovations when we step on land,
take in the new proclivities of ether
instead of benthic sand.
Sweet substances enhance our amphibious selves
till the changes no longer cause us pain.
Our backbones bind sugar knocked up with phosphate esters; — 
and we can see farther than yesterday’s marbled waters — to the salt-lit breezes so new to us we’ve yet to feel the prick of their spices on our skin.

Tears sting, slip down our cheeks
(memento mori),
from salt of the sea to salt of the shores we leave behind in our pilgrimage across the great
expanse of sky and earth.
We were borne not from untwisted marrow
but from disarticulated mirth;
and the minerals that comprise us unravel our stories.
Our textures grow vivid, unencumbered by the dust of passing knowledge.

Whipping winds blow, our indigenous surroundings press tighter into themselves,
petulant stones of hidden depths.
We lie in parallel fields, in mountain streams, in
wild places nameless, until
the small assassins we now call men, unbury us,
clarify us, and make us mute.

¹for lack of better

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