Blick Mead, Russell Cave

They were modern enough
Ten thousand years ago
And pushed almost as far apart
As humans would go
For another ten thousand or so,
Give or take the colonial era.
In Alabama, in England,
The descendants and ancestors
Of wandering bands gathered
In convenient shelters, fired
The good game they'd hunted,
And, here I'm speculating,
Shared the speculations of minds.
The ice age was over. The ice
Forgotten. The ice will never
Descend again. Next time, fire.
Meantime, giant shaggy beasts
Fed them as prelude to extinction.
You, you right now, where you sit,
Can go and see these places,
As I, wobbling and aged before age,
Have been to see them, where
The earth is nicked, neatly sliced
So the cuts against the grain reveal
Where we were, then, where
Have we been all these millennia,
Eating and doubting, no doubt,
Considering our considerations
Special, unique, true. Gone
From there. Bones and charcoal,
Tools and stones remain. Mind?
Must have been in the air there,
Maybe still there now, nowhere.