A cave woman and baby painting. Photo via Wookey Hole

Robert Borski


Both me,
with my 278 Neanderthal variants,
and the Monarch butterfly

with its hidden payload
of vespine genes
being finer examples of this,

the latter being a "gift"
from parasitic wasps,
but repurposed through time

to confer immunity
from the predations of a virus
deadly to the survival

of both insects.
But as for my own blended
heritage, I'm still waiting

to see what advantages
the commingling has
bestowed --

the ability perhaps to subtract
from the world's noise
the approach of a saber-toothed cat,

or how best to prepare mammoth milk
so it's digestible.
In the meantime, however,

sans revelation, I continue to daub
paint in animal shape
on the prefab walls of my cave.
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