It quietly branched out

and linked
and created
a fine-meshed
net, day after day,
until, finally,
like an old television set
fading into view,
from it
emerged
the first,
primordial image,
as remote now as
the caves at Lascaux.
It is an anxious woman
with a soothing voice,
reassuring the sick
little boy
in the
strange setting
of the hospital room.
Is he summoning it
from the recesses
of soft-edged time,
or is it merely a legend
recalled from an early
hearing around the
campfire?