The Cave of Shanidar by Gary Every

What else really matters

            except that someone loved him

            and loved him dearly

            enough to place flowers in his grave.

            The archeologist excavates;

            carefully scraping the remains

            of a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal

            into a sack

            to be weighed and analyzed.

            So much of prehistory has been lost;

            social structure, tribal government,

            and even though the shape of their skulls,

            length of their tongues

            and complexity of their relationships

            screams for a language

            not a single word has been retained.

            The archeologist tries to piece together the past,

            amazed that this tiny grave

            could hold so much flower pollen.

            There are many more flowers

            than could have blown into the cave of Shanidar

            with the wind;

            even during the most violent storms.

            The grains of pollen are all that remains

            of hollyhock, grape hyacinth, bachelor buttons, and groundsel-

            beautiful blossoms which faded into dust.

            All we can say for certain

            about this dead troglodyte,

            60,000 years after the fact,

            is that this short, squat, thick-skulled brute

            whose life was ruled by blade, blood, and butchering,

            was that someone loved him

            and loved him dearly

            enough to place beautiful flowers in his grave.

Gary Every, Arizona, USA