Doggerland Days

Doggerland:area of land, now submerged beneath the North Sea, that connected the British Isles to continental Europe. It was flooded by rising sea levels around 6500–6200 BCE. 

ack, ack

doggerland woggerland dogtown bogtown

I was one of the time beings who passed through Doggerland

with my ma and pa, grandmas grandpas

we didn't keep track further back than that

nobody lived long enough

the longest lived might last till forty

only the stories lived longer

still today they come back in dreams

this is the way, through the dreaming DNA.

yes we had language

a chorus of clicks, hums, whistles

there was the the humwhistle--the bumble, the bustle, 

the hustle, the buzz, the croon, the whir

we were musical folk

everyone sang while they worked

feet made the rhythms, 

for special dances we had rune drums

we had everything but words

when we needed a word, we made something up

bow-wow- pooh-pooh, ding-dong, yo-he-ho, ta-ta

if it caught on, others used it

if not it went down memory's worm hole

we didn't use many words

words were bugs that crawled along the ground

babies and mamas talked, adults didn’t

instead we sang

song rose up like bird flight

every job had its song—musilanguage

those who worked together sang together

it was the glue that held the feather to the shaft

best singers got the best women

best singers got the best men

Doggerland was savannah, lake beds, rolling hills

we ate fish and game, cod, haddock, shellfish

reindeer, small horses,

oryx lynx beaver, otter, hare, boars, bears, 

even mammoths when we one fell in the trap

though we never caught a saber tooth cat

we lived in reed huts, not caves

caves were killers, home to bears, lions, hyaenas, 

our circle of huts was a barnyard

everybody knew where everybody was

what they were doing we knew from the singing

but if the singing stopped--watch out!

we were chickens clucking in the barnyard

cluck and scratch for a grub, cluck scratch cluck scratch

but if the clucking stopped

that meant danger

all eyes looking outside

where a saber-tooth stalked in the silence

neanderthal people visited us

long-faced, barrel-chested, mastodons, 

thick pated, peaceful, big brains

they taught us to make birch bark tar 

after the ancient tundra gave birth to birch trees

we learned to make barbed antler point [tines]

for harpoons and spears

and how hard cobble strikes off flint flakes

we were boat builders, skin and log coracles 

water was a good place for the dead

send them back to their mother in a hurry

we didn't bury our dead in the ground, too much marsh

sounds like a theological joke but we did excarnation, 

leaving the dead out to be picked apart by wild animals—

or sky burials, same but leaving the bodies on high ground

explains why so few burials found, 

puzzling to later archaeologists

ha-ha, the joke's on them

excarnation and sky burials, better ask the birds and  hyenas

they were the bone pickers and stealers

what gods did we have? we had them all--

all the countless many in their manifold forms

count the gods? don’t make me laugh

our counting system stopped at five

might as well try to number the winds

gods of air and water and the night sky

gods of plant and animal forms

in every mouth of food we ate, we communed with the sacred

we eat and drank god

this is my story, this is my song

it came all the way from my DNA

where in my chromosomes the ancestors are still alive in me

where they will return to me as I know they may and can

I live in hope of that return 

across the marshlands of death to Doggerland Daze

our poets were shamans, the best story tellers

Blake said Milton was of the devil’s party

but didn’t know it because the devil is not

the devil at all he is the shaman dancing at Doggerland

wearing the elk antlers and a pelt on his back

ack ack-- -that’s me—that’s why

in time I’m going back