Immemorial.

What gift from the gods

along with fire and the wheel enabled our minds,

with their extension of eyeballs and thumbs

to endlessly meddle, fix, fiddle and test;

even to measure and build towers,

walls, canals, embankments, arches

- besides ship keels, arrow heads,

locks, both wet, dry and iron cast

as well as all sorts of observatories,

glorious astrolabes, tuning forks,

calculating and recording devices,

in wood and stone.

 

When the craft of those overweening, alien lords

crashed in Earth's forests,

surrendering - by hubris or ill-luck -

 their fancy tech to terrestrial everyman,

or were upended, dug or spat out

from the bedrock by Gaia herself

 complicit with eroding Time

and the tectonic plates own jittery dance,

they presenting unheard of new skills

 to the native - of rocketry and telemetry;

whilst others watched birds

- and copied the dynamic of their flight,

or octopus jetting after prey

 - learning the principles of propulsion.

How gravitation, the constellations

and tides suggested principles for tools;

while music, maths, the tricks and tips

to grasp, envisage and construct

all kinds of gadgets and artifices:

Weights, scales. Coinage. Magnets.

Gravity pumps, gears, compasses, looms,

calipers, spirit levels, dynamos, ratchets,

axles, pulleys, drills, cogs, stop-cocks,

pistons, water clocks, winches, wrenches,

whistles, wind-vanes and Mills.

 

The prompts and pressures of need

teaching plant and animal husbandry,

along with the seasons and cycles,

sustainable. Medicinal. Magical.

All fortified by food and sex!

 

Once gotten those electron microscopes

dark energy telescopes, CERN Colliders

neutron reactors, catalytic converters,

X and other Ray machines,

What next?

Back to the Stone Age?

To knives, nails, fig-leaves and star-light.

Or zapping off to robotic zombiedom?