The air
is heavy
with his grunts
and guttural sighs.
He has lived forever.
Some tribesmen say
he walked with the saber-toothed.
He fought battles,
hunted bears,
hunted with bears,
jumped into waterfalls,
emerged out of pyres,
abducted women,
courted women,
sired hordes of children,
narrated stories
by crackling fires
to friends and folks,
slept on mountaintops,
lay awake on warm floors,
stared at morning skies,
evening skies, night skies,
brooding.
One breezy evening,
on the banks of a mighty river,
a little girl
sits on his lap
and asks him about the time
when a dragon
swallowed the sun
whole.
He smiles,
narrates about a time
when the silence of a deep forest
was interrupted by heavy rain
and the cries of a newborn
broke
into the darkness of an eclipse
to mount
the steed
of immortality.
He died
countless times
in his dreams,
and woke up
each time
to the savage reality
of his sweat and flesh,
to the horror
of his own breathing.
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