"What Did the Monkey Guy Say?"

Upon reflection, I have weaknesses
For self-reference, declarative
Rhetoric, verbosity and minimal

Imagery, a lot of fooling around
With abstractions and pronouns,
A fascination with awareness

And its innumerable occlusions
And absences, as if extinction
Were a topic of guaranteed poetic

Importance, enjambments, puns,
Neologisms, allusions, occasional
Naming of names, family ones,

Sarah and Sequoia, who are talking
At the moment about a postcard
Sarah has long kept up, whatever

Place we inhabit, a reproduction
Of the (in)famous reconstruction
Of the Australopithecines who left

Their footprints in ash at Laetoli, the one
Presenting them as a loving couple,
The male with his arm draped

Protectively over the shoulders
Of the smaller female, as if
They were Adam and Eve leaving

Eden, with wandering steps and slow,
Or as if they were Lot and his wife,
Or, name your myth. Sequoia turns

On a small heel to ask me, seriously,
What the monkey guy said. I think.
I think. I don't think he said anything.