the world before paper

sittin’ in a prehistoric cave 

lascaux, france, i think . . .

bored,

winter time, 

not much to do just sit 

an’ stare at pop’s paintings of 

him and friends chasin’ tyrannosaurus 

and some kind of horses

there’s got to be a better, faster way

to talk about the hunt than scribbles -

like my little sister’s . . .

had a dream last night

the better way to pass along information

i think,

is symbols, abstract ones, i’ll call

letters 

that stand

not for pictures like pop’s or little sister's

but little letters

standing for vowels and syllabic phonemes 

things of that nature

merged with

sounds of expulsions of air, 

like the sounds in our cave 

at night with all our snoring

tiny bit complex, but doable, 

using tongue and lips 

and diaphragms

now the trick is to translate 

this inventive creativity

to little sister, 

especially pops

who proves the paraphrased idiom, 

“not possible to teach,

(or extremely challenging),

to teach new tricks to old dogs,”

gotta run now, 

pops wants help with his own invention,

something about using a branch

for a thing he calls leverage,

tomorrow i’ll start work on a device i’ll call,

clay tablet and stylus

i got the idea from little sister and mom’s

making dolls of clay 

poking eyes and facial features 

with a pointed stick,

. . . paper hasn’t been invented yet