Own My Own

For Lucy, mother of us all

Dinknesh: the wonderful, the fabulous, the precious. That’s you.
They named you Lucy after the Beatles’ song playing
on the cassette as they celebrated finding you.

Small, 3 & ½ feet, maybe, 60 pounds.
You walked tall, 3.2 million years ago, in Afar, Ethiopia.
What happened when you walked by that riverbank where they found you?

You, the most complete, 40% of your bones intact. You surely surprised them.
You walked upright and made them give you a new title of your own:
Australopithecus afarensis. How could you know I would be thinking about you?

That Word

A boat named No Justice floats in the bay.
Gleams of gentle light peek at the horizon.
I hear the incessant juddering of the grass cutter.
The dull hum, an unruly crowd–a thousand terns
descending. Their outcry fades, that word rises.

Spewed by the Amherst councilman.
Tattooed where the children watch–
at the base of Glace Bay’s skateboard park.
Overheard at the Toronto York School Board.

Like a knife scraped over my old wound
still tender to the touch.