Before writing. Before cities. Before the wheel,
before the kiln, before the word for god
existed in any language, someone looked up
and
Not prayed. Not yet. There was no word for that.
But reached. The way a hand reaches
into dark water not knowing what's below,
the way a woman after a long day
still turns toward the stranger and
The temples came later. The texts came later.
The arguments about which text, which temple,
which version of the reaching counts
as reaching — all of that was
But the reaching itself.
On every continent. In every era.
Before they could have copied each other,
before the trade routes, before the ships,
before the satellites that let me sit in Helsinki
knowing a woman in San Antonio went to the gym tonight
carrying