In a dark cave, in the shadow of Rome

piled up beneath stalactites

are remains of ancient proto-humans.

You could hold their skulls up to the light

and see through the bite holes down through

to the brainpan, and run your fingers across

their over-sized brows which hang over the eyes

like little hills bordering a sloping field.

Its best to imagine them as something else entirely

to see them as the last fading piece of a tapestry

where little threads of green and gold and ochre

hang ragged, once connected but now cut off.

These were the ones God made but did not save

remainders from the grand experiment kicked off with

“Let there be light.”