A game of chase
played through copper pyres,
ribbons
or roads
for electric heat

A pulse, a leap—
a silicon bridge to power,
this mineral
brain could burst,
could crack, or melt—
all its knowing
gone

Letters
stamped on clay chits,
like tickets or calling cards;
numbers knotted
in cotton string;
rock runes, petroglyphs—

these words die
when the last beast
rises out of man;
when the jungle draws
back its children; when
a neuron shorts its circuit,
good now only
for a song never-
ending