Lucy-
The ph.d.’s with picks and brushes
sketched you up from your bones
your strangely tilted pelvis and knocked knees
suggest you’d become the first biped
So, they’ve found the one nomadic Mother of us All
and they wanted to call you something suitable
Mother, we all have our reasons
for not calling you Eve
what have I in common with the
lily-like gamine of Eden
bald of thigh, skin as taut
and flushed as a ripe peach
who ambles about the Garden
inventing names for the creeping things
and tasting the sun-sweetened
ovaries of trees?
But you I could hold-
I Name You!
the mere three feet of you
Let’s get together and talk
cellulite, crows feet and
breasts that are not her
pert round buds.
I could ask you
what I would love to know
of my Mother-
what gave you the courage
little tree-climbing nut-gathering girl
to lift your knuckles from the ground
after crawling for millions of years-
to walk upright with your breasts out front
and-oh, Lucille!-to cherish one Adam
in all those Neanderthals?
