Australopithecus afarensis

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?