04-27-2019, 07:35 AM
Prometheus Day
There may be disagreement on the day
the world changed, but can we at least agree
it had to do with fire?
Perhaps it was the day some proto-man
discovered that by seizing its cold end
he could pick up a burning branch to lift
and carry it to somewhere else, which he
or some descendant found could also be
set burning if he liked.
A greater change, it seems, took place upon
some day a later human found he could
make fire himself, without a lightning stroke,
by twirling sticks together rapidly
or striking ferrous stone with flint to spark
new flames at any time.
I say the world changed, rather, on that day
when one man taught another how to light
a fire, their method’s not significant.
From then it spread as no inferno could,
this knowledge that a man could change the world–
which then, of course, they did.
There may be disagreement on the day
the world changed, but can we at least agree
it had to do with fire?
Perhaps it was the day some proto-man
discovered that by seizing its cold end
he could pick up a burning branch to lift
and carry it to somewhere else, which he
or some descendant found could also be
set burning if he liked.
A greater change, it seems, took place upon
some day a later human found he could
make fire himself, without a lightning stroke,
by twirling sticks together rapidly
or striking ferrous stone with flint to spark
new flames at any time.
I say the world changed, rather, on that day
when one man taught another how to light
a fire, their method’s not significant.
From then it spread as no inferno could,
this knowledge that a man could change the world–
which then, of course, they did.
Non-practicing atheist