We Were Human – A Poem

Prehistoric man held flint in hand,
Carved his path through silent land.
Barefoot on the forest floor,
He asked for little, needed no more.
He smiled beneath the open sky,
Knew how to live, and how to die.

We hold blades of stainless steel,
Sharper than the truths we feel.
Shoes that run on cushioned air,
Yet walk through life unaware.
Homes of brick and glass and stone,
Yet find ourselves more lost, alone.

He hunted with his hands and will,
His hunger deep, his spirit still.
We shop in aisles lined wall to wall,
Yet feed no hunger, none at all.
He walked the earth, slow and free,
While we rush past what we can’t see.

He lit his fires with stick and spark,
And found the light within the dark.
We turn a knob and flames arise,
But miss the warmth in others’ eyes.
No screens to steal his fleeting glance,
Just wind, and stars, and circumstance.

He had no feeds, no noise, no streams,
Yet lived a life of rooted dreams.
He knew the wind, the beast, the tree,
The pulse of earth, the mystery.
He danced with death and sang with birth,
He knew his place upon the earth.

But we—
We drown in all we’ve made and own,
Surrounded, yet somehow alone.
With every gain, we’ve lost our way,
Traded soul for brighter day.
Forgot the art of simply being,
Of touching life, of truly seeing.

We’ve forgotten what he knew by heart—
The sacred whole, not broken parts.
The quiet truth beneath the noise,
The weightless joy in simple joys.
We’ve paved the wild, we’ve caged the flame,
And never noticed we’re not the same.

We cannot go back, not truly, not whole,
The path is gone, the cost is soul.
We are not him—though we descend,
We lost the thread we couldn’t mend.
A different species shaped by steel,
By data, speed, the need to feel—
But never be.

He was human—
Flesh and earth and bone and breath.
We are shadows made of screens,
Ghosts who fear both life and death.
He lived with all, he lived as one.
We live apart, and call it done.

And so we stand, advanced and free—
Unhappy kings of memory.
He had so little, yet was whole.
We have the world—
but not a soul.