EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD: bringing our favorite previously-published poems back to the front page.
Submitted by Merril D. Smith
Almost 200,000 years ago
he hunted across the miles,
journeyed farther than his brothers–
an explorer,
a dreamer–
a man following fate
who lived
till he lived no more,
joining the dust of space
cycled through time–
lush green land
gradually turning desert brown–
and there,
his jawbone, open to the stars,
a monument.
His epitaph,
“eight teeth, one broken.”
Not living,
no longer here,
yet not completely gone.
Photo credit: Thomas Balfour (Tom) Garrett – Excavation