Drum Drumming

The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies. 
– David Hume 

Once        eleven thousand years after the deluge         we asked  

the night urgently & when we looked up we directed our religion  

to slab pilings & lintels in a trabeated system of posts & beams  

architraves punched & chiseled in birds       & four-legged animals.  

All of them speaking              told us. Now we can’t hear (stone deaf  

gone) & we talk & talk 

& talk. 

Once we were focused on the sky in brilliant topographies 

of mysteries & possibilities. Now there’s electricity & our dreams 

are shadow cast – illuminated in streetlights & office tower blink & shine.  

Once there were coal mines & nuclear power plants & everyone  

was happy. When I felt the chill 

I cranked the heat to high.  

Once I woke up early every morning with so many wants  

to torture me              so many possibilities for earnestness  

for banging on the pumiced skins of animals – prairie buckskin  

or elk skin stretched taut across a hollowed-out log. I believed 

in nice nature             romantic nature               wild nature.  

Nature. 

Once I felt the earth’s wobbling on its axis (bulging at the equator)  

& I went along with the liars’ facades        the conquerors marching 

marching. 

Once I convinced myself I exist. I am myself. Peerless.  

I never thought of feral screams. That monstrosity. I covered my privates  

with leaves. Or my hands. Heartfelt my body became  

outside       invisible        reducible        a limb       a bough       a twig.