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30 Poems in 30 Days
The First Sign of Civilization
Poem the fourteenth
The first sign of civilization
is not a clay pot, an arrow head,
a fishhook or flint tool:
it is a healed fracture.
Civilization is a femur, broken
by misadventure but healed in time;
not a death sentence in a community
who feeds their weak and sick.
In nature, a broken bone
means being left behind.
Unable to hunt or scavenge,
the injured animal dies, alone.
The ridged edged of the old break
means that someone brought him food,
kept him warm and safe to heal
at great personal sacrifice.
Our vision of a knuckle-dragging cave man,
on his way to sapience, was actually an old man
suffering from advanced arthritis,
nursed by someone and buried when he died.
Nandy, a Neanderthal male, was likely deaf
and blind in one eye, with two broken legs,
and had one hand amputated, but lived,
tenderly cared for…
