From a book in progress, "Riding the Absolute." First published in "Many Mountains Moving."

POINTS OF VIEW

What if we were cave people
& lived in caves & ate
Woolly Mammoth
& had no language
except signing & pictographs
on debatable walls?

What if we loved rocks?

What would we think
when lightening struck
& trees came undone,
their imploring limbs swaying
like civilized dreams &
fire smoothed away the dark?

What if you loved me,
would I bring you flowers?

What if we crawled into our TV sets
as though they were caves &
language meant nothing
(except in its humming,
its shimmer, its electric
skittering, shaking itself
loose & getting into
some young boy, a girl,
the stuttering beat of a heart
like roots or grafts going deep
into the flesh of generations)
& our emotions were as dull
as bread & the only thing left
was the curiosity of dogs sniffing
among the rubble for survivors
of another white hot blast
deep inside the guts of CNN?

What of our desire for rain?

If we were cave people & lived
in TV sets & ate the transistors
& had no way of communicating
except by graffiti on subway walls,
would deep thoughts and the language
of computers keep our children intact?

What if there was no way back
& gravity undid itself & the world entire
fell away & left us floating in space:
TV sets, automobiles, computers, the
fancy china of a five-star restaurant,
noodles & that sort of thing, a cow
floating by good as the nursery rhyme
that started it all, a saber-toothed tiger
gooey with tar & the little white blink
of the world eons toward eternity?

What if there was no way back
& when we flipped channels
reception was bad, even the
Flintstones -- everything
scrolling
ghostly
& a high-pitched buzz.