My teacher might have answered, thought’s even older
than Homer, Susan. The town librarian shrugged off
the Lascaux cave drawings, and the Bottle Shoppe guy

took another customer when I pressed him on the Bacchus
wine caves and the exact age of catacombs. Human memory,
experts say, starts to slip at forty, ten years after handshakes

soften and brains begin to shrink. According to Orwell, At fifty,
everyone has the face he deserves. Yes, the Canyon’s kettle hole
may be older than thought, the glacial markings and stone

striation not unlike the felled red oak’s hypnotic circles
that turn us pliant while coaxing our descent.