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15 Phone Call from the Pleistocene The woman floating downstream on a sycamore tree lazy on a hot day escapes her tribe in a cloud of mosquitoes and sunshine. She stinks of prehistory where our ancestors still cut their hair with stones and she presses nettles to her belly when the baby comes. Alone by the river miles from the familiar mountains and the people she has known she begins our beginning as far back as we can trace. A woman. A river. A breaking. A screaming and then a baby in the blood of her lap. Moss makes a bed and in the morning we get up. Time starts its official count and the chromosomes know. Look out for the rhinoceros, mother, peeking through the ferns. Look out for the lions. We have a long way to go to get here—a song made entirely of prose. A grown man bewildered talking with his mother on the phone. She always says what he needs to be lucky. Of course she remembers the panther on the path-way and the starfish in the tide pools. Of course she remembers the bark boat full of strangers and the weight of chains. Yes we died, she says, but you were never in any danger. ...

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