save the date

Donald Johanson, who is most well known for discovering "Lucy," is coming to TCU November 12-13, 2012. The TCU Honors Program, Anthropology Dept. Add Ran College and the Ronald E. Moore foundation are sponsoring the event. More details later. 

But Not Quite

But Not Quite

A little walk, perhaps,

The warm evening air,

A half moon punctuates

Our dim cobbled path.

Away from the city’s

Hardened rhythms,

The sad, handsome houses,

Trees darkly wave,

Stars blink encouragement.

Deep in the salt marsh,

The breeze volunteering,

Ravens circle, lazily,

The stony surface sending

Their melancholy cries.

Finally, she takes my hand,

Says, “On nights like this,

It is almost enough.”

Almost.

Laetoli

Laetoli

At Laetoli,
for seventy feet,
there are footprints,
preserved in volcanic ash,
three and a half million years old.
Down from the trees,
fully upright, pre-human,
a woman and a man
walking
          together
                     somewhere.
Who knows if she's with child,
what beast they just escaped, or
if they've lost their tribe or are rejoining it.
Tread carefully,
we never know,
how we'll be remembered,
as are they,
walking
          somewhere
                          together.

Dreaming Argentina

Dreaming Argentina

Ah, Buenos Aires,
You are the woman I once loved.
Too beautiful to turn away,
Too wounded to ask to stay.
Of course I'll take you back-
How could I not
as Piazzola starts to play that tango,
the bandaneon wraps Binelli's sad shoulders,
horse tails grandly brush the polo fields,
at Boca, on Sunday, the earth gently trembling,
and, famously late, Teatro Colon opens again
   its golden doors.
The richest poor country on the earth.
Many long rivers have made you, but
year after year, laconic, in plain sight,
your own rob your sky blue birthright.
I beg of you, my beauty-
Repair your sidewalks, grow greater hymns,
throw the fat rascals into River Platte.
And if you don't... next Tuesday,
we'll walk along Parque Las Heras, verdant still,
have a paper and a coffee, and, like old lovers,
dream that you one day will.

Poem That Won't Stay Put

Poem That Won't Stay Put

Some people know words
that can rise up off the page
and visit places, like
a garden, a pool,
another country, the moon-
forswearing earthly realities-
a streaming nimbus
moving through the air,
stopping for afternoon tea,
anywhere, remembering, singing
a canticle at night,
and then at their pleasure,
reassembling in the book
and giving off light.

A Short History of Life

            There was no love,

            no race of Gods,

            no music of any kind, faint or ephemeral.

            Till molybdenum

            riding on an asteroid

            collided with a petri dish of cosmic drizzle–

            a flask of gurgling gases–

            on earth, life stirred.

            Time wound its clocks, marked its calendars.

           

            Beetles and seed spores

            filled the floor of forests,

            killer whales and fiddler crabs occupied the seas.

            In far pastures ibex and catamount,

            chrysanthemum, mossy marigolds,        

            the skies flecked with falcons and whippoorwills.

            Then reasoning creatures–

            bushmen striding out of Africa–

            gathered at the rivers of the earth, its valleys, plains.

           

            Nightfire tales were told,

            paintings on cave walls and vases,        

            fear and wonder, singing their incomprehension.

            Predators, disease, ghastly wars,

            there was compassion, hunger,

            mothers bringing babies to their bare breasts.

            There was joy, brilliance,

            increasing mastery of earth.

            And under a single bulb in many dim rooms–

            longing

The Golden Man---Kazakhstan

The land mass of Kazakhstan is the 9th largest nation in the world,
> bigger than western europe. Population 16 million of whom 1.6 live in
> Almaty. After the fall of the ussr the capital was moved to a new
> city, Astana, because almaty is entirely too close to the chinese
> border. It is a muslim nation since the invasion of the Arab Caliphate
> in the 8th century. Almaty was totally destroyed by the Mongol
> invasion in the 13th century, which empire lasted till the late 14th
> century when it imploded of its own weight. The uzbek Tamerlane ruled
> for a period then Kazak was free except for several invasions by the
> chinese and Russians. It has been a democracy since 1991.
> Here I had one of those priceless, unexpected experiences for which a
> traveler lives.Upon learning of my interest in archaeology, I was
> taken some 50 km out of Almaty to where a small museum had been
> recently constructed at the site of an ancient city and a number of
> tumuli-raised burial mounds, where the important people of the city
> had been buried. The city was one of the 18 Saka tribes spread across
> Kazakhstan who were kazaks ancestors, 8th century b.c.e. Herodutus
> wrote about them calling them Scythians. It was at this site than an
> archaeologist found the "Golden Man" who is now the post-communist
> country's symbol (on the flag astride a snow leopard, and everywhere).
> The discovered body was that of a young prince buried resplendently in
> 400 pieces of gold, head to foot. I was introduced to the now 76 year
> old archaeologist for whom the word spry must have been coined. After
> a Kazak bear hug and a loud greeting he stared at me for a full
> minute, then said, "back then," meaning the long ago past- "you are
> Kazak, follow me." Of course I've been told the same thing by
> Tibetans, Greeks, Turks, Welsh and Irish, so I'm proud to be a citizen
> of the world or a melting pot in and of myself. We walked a mile into
> the fields and sat on top of one of the tumuli, he said, to show
> respect for our ancestors. Through a translator he began to describe
> the Saka city which had been located in the foothills of the vast
> steppes in the distance. The Saka were ruled by a tribal council and
> there was no inter tribal war. There were extensive trade relations as
> goods of many far away countries have been found. He pointed to the
> location of the king's palace, where the nobles lived, and where the
> common people lived. We then discussed our theories of the origins and
> causes of war, and the origins in early humans of artstic and
> religious impulses. As we walked back after an hour or so, he said he
> now had two Ronalds--Reagan and myself--"no more Ronalds, enough."
> Another Kazak hug, he slipped thru the fence to the museum and was
> gone. Just another tuesday afternoon in Kazakhstan, right?
> As further evidence of my cliched theory that all peoples in all times
> are more or less the same, as we drove back into the city we passed a
> Bentley dealership and behind a gated enclave were spread a mile in
> each direction: McMansions- 10,000 sq ft closely bunched. Not without
> some corruption, the vast oil reserves, which may be as much as 1/4 of
> the reserves remaining on the planet, have been good to Kazakstan.
> And yes, I did meet Borat--he was selling trinkets in the bazaar,
> wearing a belt as old as he was, of which any cowboy would be proud,
> telling Kazak jokes.