Before machines and even
tame animals

they lived in absolute favor
of the round god
who yellowed the sky

so that no act
was useless to it —

nothing could stop
the morning praise
of their hands,
aimed high

nothing controlled
where they leapt
barefoot about
going perfectly
from cliff to rock

to rock
and

what occurred
in fashioning
a stone tool,
that reverence alone
could imbue it with power.

And in honoring,
all prospered
through days of their creating.

How their intent
must have looked then,
from above

imagine that gold

light, and the way
the warm god
came always pleased

across where everything
mattered.

[first appeared in Emrys Journal, Vol. 21: Spring 2004]

Therése Halscheid