Poem: "The Man Who Missed the Mammoths"
This poem came out of the September 3, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by janetmiles. It also fills the "Born Like This" square in my 9-1-24 card for the People with Disabilities Drabble Fest Bingo. This poem belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.
"The Man Who Missed the Mammoths"
[2014]
Darin Waskewitch was
mostly Onion Lake Cree,
with some Asian ancestors,
and just a little French Canadian.
He also had about 3% Neanderthal DNA
and belonged to the Ne-High Club of people
with above-average Neanderthal heritage.
Strange how something that small
could have such a big impact.
As a gengineer, Darin was
fascinated by which traits
had survived over time and
how they expressed themselves
in people of mixed descent (which
was almost everyone except Africans).
He understood that his Neanderthal ancestry
influenced his memory and hunting skills.
He was indifferent to peer pressure and
didn't care that other people thought
he was a kook for some of his interests.
The low pain tolerance was a nuisance,
but he had learned to work around it.
Darin particularly enjoyed events
by the Ne-High Club, which catered
to a variety of Neanderthal traits.
It was relaxing to hang out with
other people who shared some
of the same features and who
often cared about prehistory.
Plus most members also liked
parallel play or work, so they
held lots of introvert parties for
quiet, independent activities.
Darin detested the way that
mainstream society heaped
demands on children who were
too young to understand what
adult expectations even were,
let alone how to meet them.
All those absurd requirements
about "appropriate" play and
"developmental milestones" --
like it was somehow wrong for
anyone over two to enjoy playing
alone, or anyone over four to prefer
playing side-by-side over together --
just made his back teeth itch.
Darin had made many friends
at Ne-High Club gatherings,
both local ones in Toronto and
a few down in the United States.
Akari and Fumino Furukawa
were Japanese-American sisters.
Akari was an introverted artist,
fearless of heights but daunted by
public speaking. She liked to share
her pictures of mountain climbing,
as long as people didn't expect
her to talk about them much.
Fumino was a journalist for
the Philadelphia Fact-Finder.
Like Darin, she enjoyed
a great memory and didn't
care about others' opinions.
She had a hard time switching
tasks or topics, though, which
could be an asset at work but
a bother in her personal life.
Darin liked reading the articles
that Fumino wrote, many of them
illustrated with Akari's artwork.
Favian Philonides came up from
Onion city and was Greek-American.
A philosopher, he served in a think tank
focused on multicultural, accessibility,
and inclusivity issues in the metroplex.
From his Neanderthal heritage, he
got a lot of physical strength and
a hobby of collecting things. He
tended to be moody, though.
Darin liked listening to
Favian's ideas about how
to make society less stuffy
and more open to diversity,
especially for folks like them
who had Neanderthal traits.
Martha Concharty was
Seminole and American.
She taught traditional
and wilderness skills at
the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum
on the Big Cypress Reservation
of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
She had the Neanderthal fertility
with her six kids, along with
an impressive knack for
foraging and storing foods.
However, she was neophobic
and she struggled with learning
new things, meeting people, or
getting by in unfamiliar places.
Darin loved comparing Cree
and Seminole cultures, or
watching her demonstrations
of ancient survival skills like
flint knapping and firestarting.
Edda Anuvindr came from
Oslo, Norway where she ran
the publishing company
Å skrive noe bak øret, or
A Note Behind Your Ear,
which put out materials
in English, Norwegian,
Old Norse, and Swedish.
In addition to the fertility --
she had twelve children
(including two sets of
fraternal twins) and
three grandchildren --
she also had red hair
and questioned authority.
Darin didn't want to think about
her low pain tolerance going
through ten pregnancies.
It was fascinating to read
the magazines that Edda
brought for them to share,
and sometimes she baked
Norwegian cookies such as
hojortetakk or krumkaker.
Hubert Althaus, who was
German-Canadian, had
the highest amount of
Neanderthal DNA out
of anyone Darin knew,
at a whopping 10%.
A professor of
archaeology and
anthropology, Hubert
specialized in studying
Neanderthal culture.
His heritage appeared
in his expert cognition
and robust physique.
He could be dogmatic,
especially in his field.
Hubert had six kids
across five marriages.
His work introduced him
to several of his wives, and
also broke up relationships,
due to extensive travel.
It was Hubert who had
helped Darin figure out
what he really wanted
to do as a gengineer.
The professor had done
a presentation about how
Neanderthals had been
apex predators who hunted
huge game and ate mostly meat,
supplemented by some plants.
Then the Pleistocene Extinctions
occurred, stripping the diversity
from everywhere but Africa.
Dozens of genera went extinct,
and animals lost a staggering 98%
of their body mass, with very little of
the megafauna managing to survive.
The genus Homo went from being
a relatively small predator dwarfed by
both its prey and competing predators
to being among the larger survivors.
That was what helped Darin pin down
a feeling he'd had for as long as
he could remember -- a kind of
eerie loneliness, as if something
had been missing from his life.
Only after speaking with Hubert
about prehistoric ecosystems
had Darin realized what it was.
He missed the mammoths.
He missed the ground sloths too,
the greatdeer, the aurochs, even
the cave bears and saberteeth.
When Darin was a boy, he
had gone to a museum and
seen a statue of a mammoth,
and that had made him cry.
No wonder he felt lonely and
unhappy; his people had always
nurtured an awareness of nature
and the delicate balance of ecology.
Of course he could feel the gaps,
like holes eaten in a buffalo robe.
When he blurted it out at the club,
everyone around him nodded and
agreed with his observations,
instead of calling him crazy.
They missed the mammoths too,
and the rest of the lost ecosystems.
Darin wasn't an archaeologist
like Hubert, so he couldn't tell
exactly how or why everything
had died out so suddenly, or
at least not without looking it up
in the library after the gathering.
He was a gengineer, though, so
he could do something about it.
Darin could bring back the mammoths.
* * *
Notes:
This poem's notes are long, so the character and content notes appear separately.
"The Man Who Missed the Mammoths"
[2014]
Darin Waskewitch was
mostly Onion Lake Cree,
with some Asian ancestors,
and just a little French Canadian.
He also had about 3% Neanderthal DNA
and belonged to the Ne-High Club of people
with above-average Neanderthal heritage.
Strange how something that small
could have such a big impact.
As a gengineer, Darin was
fascinated by which traits
had survived over time and
how they expressed themselves
in people of mixed descent (which
was almost everyone except Africans).
He understood that his Neanderthal ancestry
influenced his memory and hunting skills.
He was indifferent to peer pressure and
didn't care that other people thought
he was a kook for some of his interests.
The low pain tolerance was a nuisance,
but he had learned to work around it.
Darin particularly enjoyed events
by the Ne-High Club, which catered
to a variety of Neanderthal traits.
It was relaxing to hang out with
other people who shared some
of the same features and who
often cared about prehistory.
Plus most members also liked
parallel play or work, so they
held lots of introvert parties for
quiet, independent activities.
Darin detested the way that
mainstream society heaped
demands on children who were
too young to understand what
adult expectations even were,
let alone how to meet them.
All those absurd requirements
about "appropriate" play and
"developmental milestones" --
like it was somehow wrong for
anyone over two to enjoy playing
alone, or anyone over four to prefer
playing side-by-side over together --
just made his back teeth itch.
Darin had made many friends
at Ne-High Club gatherings,
both local ones in Toronto and
a few down in the United States.
Akari and Fumino Furukawa
were Japanese-American sisters.
Akari was an introverted artist,
fearless of heights but daunted by
public speaking. She liked to share
her pictures of mountain climbing,
as long as people didn't expect
her to talk about them much.
Fumino was a journalist for
the Philadelphia Fact-Finder.
Like Darin, she enjoyed
a great memory and didn't
care about others' opinions.
She had a hard time switching
tasks or topics, though, which
could be an asset at work but
a bother in her personal life.
Darin liked reading the articles
that Fumino wrote, many of them
illustrated with Akari's artwork.
Favian Philonides came up from
Onion city and was Greek-American.
A philosopher, he served in a think tank
focused on multicultural, accessibility,
and inclusivity issues in the metroplex.
From his Neanderthal heritage, he
got a lot of physical strength and
a hobby of collecting things. He
tended to be moody, though.
Darin liked listening to
Favian's ideas about how
to make society less stuffy
and more open to diversity,
especially for folks like them
who had Neanderthal traits.
Martha Concharty was
Seminole and American.
She taught traditional
and wilderness skills at
the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum
on the Big Cypress Reservation
of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
She had the Neanderthal fertility
with her six kids, along with
an impressive knack for
foraging and storing foods.
However, she was neophobic
and she struggled with learning
new things, meeting people, or
getting by in unfamiliar places.
Darin loved comparing Cree
and Seminole cultures, or
watching her demonstrations
of ancient survival skills like
flint knapping and firestarting.
Edda Anuvindr came from
Oslo, Norway where she ran
the publishing company
Å skrive noe bak øret, or
A Note Behind Your Ear,
which put out materials
in English, Norwegian,
Old Norse, and Swedish.
In addition to the fertility --
she had twelve children
(including two sets of
fraternal twins) and
three grandchildren --
she also had red hair
and questioned authority.
Darin didn't want to think about
her low pain tolerance going
through ten pregnancies.
It was fascinating to read
the magazines that Edda
brought for them to share,
and sometimes she baked
Norwegian cookies such as
hojortetakk or krumkaker.
Hubert Althaus, who was
German-Canadian, had
the highest amount of
Neanderthal DNA out
of anyone Darin knew,
at a whopping 10%.
A professor of
archaeology and
anthropology, Hubert
specialized in studying
Neanderthal culture.
His heritage appeared
in his expert cognition
and robust physique.
He could be dogmatic,
especially in his field.
Hubert had six kids
across five marriages.
His work introduced him
to several of his wives, and
also broke up relationships,
due to extensive travel.
It was Hubert who had
helped Darin figure out
what he really wanted
to do as a gengineer.
The professor had done
a presentation about how
Neanderthals had been
apex predators who hunted
huge game and ate mostly meat,
supplemented by some plants.
Then the Pleistocene Extinctions
occurred, stripping the diversity
from everywhere but Africa.
Dozens of genera went extinct,
and animals lost a staggering 98%
of their body mass, with very little of
the megafauna managing to survive.
The genus Homo went from being
a relatively small predator dwarfed by
both its prey and competing predators
to being among the larger survivors.
That was what helped Darin pin down
a feeling he'd had for as long as
he could remember -- a kind of
eerie loneliness, as if something
had been missing from his life.
Only after speaking with Hubert
about prehistoric ecosystems
had Darin realized what it was.
He missed the mammoths.
He missed the ground sloths too,
the greatdeer, the aurochs, even
the cave bears and saberteeth.
When Darin was a boy, he
had gone to a museum and
seen a statue of a mammoth,
and that had made him cry.
No wonder he felt lonely and
unhappy; his people had always
nurtured an awareness of nature
and the delicate balance of ecology.
Of course he could feel the gaps,
like holes eaten in a buffalo robe.
When he blurted it out at the club,
everyone around him nodded and
agreed with his observations,
instead of calling him crazy.
They missed the mammoths too,
and the rest of the lost ecosystems.
Darin wasn't an archaeologist
like Hubert, so he couldn't tell
exactly how or why everything
had died out so suddenly, or
at least not without looking it up
in the library after the gathering.
He was a gengineer, though, so
he could do something about it.
Darin could bring back the mammoths.
* * *
Notes:
This poem's notes are long, so the character and content notes appear separately.