Eric Killough

A HISTORY OF THE HUMAN IDEA

At the newspaper office
The windows are full of rain and the lightning intermittent.
Sirens are howling for miles around.

The presses and the headlines.
The ink and the bad news.
Sometimes our feelings could get in the way.

Dogs attack neighbor's children,
Ski-lifts crash to the ground,
A quake can topple 50,000 people

And one troop of angry monkeys with their guns & their masks
Will drive another away.
And no matter how intricate the wrinkles

On the stained-glass face of the saints in the town cathedral,
Hundreds will be killed there. No one is safe.
No one ever has been. We stay inside.

I say we when I'm talking about our losses.
We say I when we talk about our gains.
What's strange there? The grey cat appears

At the sliding glass door with a bird in his mouth
And the bird is flapping its wings.
There are prayer flags all around.

The wind understands what they mean.
There are pieces of the walls
Of the city all around us. Falling to our feet like

A hundred-year oak crashing
Onto our enfeebled electrical wires
Brings us back

To the present moment
Which is sometimes filled with light
And sometimes filled with horror.

And horror like history is a human idea and our human idea
Has had a horrifying history.
And the last important story left is still off sleeping

In a cave somewhere.
Hallelujah.

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