Lucy, whose skeleton is approximately 3.2 million years old, whose genus and species are “Australopithecus afarensis, or ‘southern ape of Afar,’ after the region of Ethiopia where the bones were found,” was discovered in 1974, at Hadar in northern Ethiopia. “The Ethiopian people refer to her as ‘Dinkenesh,’ an Amharic language term meaning ‘You are beautiful.’”

Lucy

your secret book

that you leaned over and wrote just in the dirt—

Not having to have an ending

Not having to last

…in thy book all my members

were written, which in continuance

were fashioned, when as yet there

was none of them.

PSALM 139:16

Two hands

were all you owned

for food

for love

Now you own none, Lucy

nor no words

only

breath marks

breath marks

only

nor no words

Or what do you do now Lucy

for love?

Your eyeholes.

Lucy

my saxifrage that splits the rocks

wildgood

mother

you fill my center-hole

with bliss

No one is so tender in her scream

Wants me so much

Not just, but brings me to be     Is

when I am close to death

and close to life

The spider

in her web three days

dead on the window Lucy

In the electricity of love, its lightning strike

or in its quiet hum in the thighs

like this little icebox here

not knowing any better

or in the dumb hum of the heater going on

little stirs in the room-tone

I rush outdoors into the air you are

Lucy

and you rush out to receive me

At last there you are

who I always knew was there

but almost died not

meeting

when my scraped-out child died Lucy

you hold her, all the time.

Lucy

when the dark bodies

dropped out of the towers

When Ruth died

and Grace

and Helen Ruth

And Iraq

and Iraq

And Nikolay

Lucy, when Jane in her last clothes

goes across       with Chekhov

you are the ferryman, the monk

Ieronim

who throws your weight on the rope.

I wash my plate and spoon

as carefully as a priest.

Did you have a cup, Lucy?

O God who transcends time,

let Lucy have a cup.

You bodhisattva here-

with-us. You wanted to come back!

I’m afraid

and can’t pay attention

to it       I’m

wild with heat and cold

and my head hurts:

The nine wild turkeys come up calmly to the porch

to see you, Lucy

My Work of Art

for Lucy

It’s a piece of brown wrapping paper

taped to the wall     over the table

in this beautiful room with no pictures

First, written across the top:

“It was as if she was standing

across the road

waiting to see if anyone

wanted to get to know her.”

Then taped under that:

Du, der du weißt, und dessen weites Wissen

You who know, and whose vast knowing

is born of poverty, abundance of poverty—

make it so the poor are no longer

despised and thrown away.

Look at them standing about