How It Got Dark by Don McKay
When the second stone
was cast, when Gatling
begat his gun, when to know
became to own—animals,
land, ideas, people;
when they piled the skulls
and posed for photographs, when
the fifth stone fell
like a schizophrenic star, like
an Airbus, like an angel
crashing into space-time;
when the red squirrel popped
out of the stew pot and
up a pine tree in a flash, then
paused to boast and scold us in that brash
staccato and I said that's it,
let's get the little bugger and picked
up the first stone.
