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Poems and Thoughts by Frank Maurer

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Africa

Drums Across the Ocean (1978) opus 77

In Lesotho, Africa, where we lived,
Distant evening fires on the hillsides were often seen,
Accompanied by long bouts of drumming.
Surely, over there, was comradery accompanied by gulps of juala (sorghum beer).

After years in Africa, then Sweden,
I arrived in, of all places, Davis, California!
I was beginning to organize my new, 37 acre farm.
One evening, I was just taken out of myself,
When I saw fires on the slopes of the Coast Range,
And, sure enough, drums continually wafting on the breeze.
It was indeed a shock to be transported back
To the wonderful evening drums of my past, Lesotho, Africa.

Paul, the South African opus 101

Paul of South Africa, a sensitive, gentle man.
One who became one with the wondrous creatures
Of his continent--the great remnants of former planetary creatures.
Massive herds; an ebb and flow of migration;
Even the intimacy of close encounters with ancient rhinos.

Now married to a North American
And a new interaction with his world.
An expatriate, notified that all who have left the MotherLand,
Must return or lose their citizenship.
Much like Joseph and Mary required to sign into their birthplace,
Even though Mary is with child
And it is with difficulty that she travels.
Or that Paul, linguistically tattooed
With his magical accent,
Defining him to his place of birth,
Is separated from that place
And his very being.
Like the tattooed Jew, ostracized from Austria,
Landless, countryless, Serengeti-less
From his true natal origins.
Conundrum, confusion, anger, angst.
Where is his center, his identification,
His Mother Africa?

I. Human-caused Evolutionary Changes - Tuskless Female Elephants in Mozambique opus 138

Wars cause many changes, but tuskless elephants?
The 15 year war in Mozambique, caused culling for ivory.
Almost all (90%) of the elephant population was destroyed in
Gorongosa Park, just to finance senseless human warfare.
Half of the surviving females were tuskless;
Before the war, fewer than a fifth lacked tusks.
The tusks are used to dig for water, strip bark, and joust.
Now tuskless individuals feed mostly on grasses,
Whereas those remaining with tusks eat legumes and tough woody plants.
This is a major change in food preference!

The dominant gene for tusklessness is carried on the X chromosome,
So only one X chromosome needs to carry the gene--
And remember that female mammals have two X's.
But when the affected X is passed to a male with one X and one Y,
That single X is basically lethal and may be the one
To affect male development and thus early embryonic death.
The general thought is that evolution takes a long time,
But here we see major relative change within a 15 year time span!
The tuskless surviving females gave birth to daughters, about half being tuskless.
And because of the lethal gene on the X, two-thirds of their offspring were female!

These results show how human activity
Can have a major influence on the evolution of other life forms.

Emmett Till opus 152

Emmett Till was born a black child on 25 July 1941.
Next month I will, from 25 August 1941, be 82.
Listening to a program about Till, it struck me hard,
That he and I were companions in time--
He, an exact month older than I.
But he lasted only, through terrible tragedy, to the age of 14.
I, at 14, was in junior high school, absorbing a Shakespeare play,
Never being moved to whistle at a woman (if that ever occurred),
But I certainly thought women were something special.

Emmett took a trip from Chicago to visit family in the South.
I took a Mohawk Airlines flight from Boston
To my grandparents' farm in Watkins Glen, NY.
But how each voyage ended was--well, black and white.
I am so sad my divided country treated him with such violence.
I was fortunate that chromosomes
Assorted themselves as they did to create me.
But my trial--though I lived through it all,
Was my ostracism when I opposed the Vietnam war--
Uncles and aunts wanted nothing to do with me as an 'unpatriot'.

Much culminated for Emmett and me when I taught for three years in Africa
To see the source-land of all Homo sapiens,
And walk in the dust of Oldovai with the Leakeys.
The plunder of Africans for basically free labor--
1609 became as important for me as 1066.
My aura drifts into that open casket with Emmett's mangled body.
The Holocaust and the Scottish Clearances and 1609. ...
Somehow all of us have shared that casket with Emmett.

Ahmen.

To Paul, Who Would Understand opus 262

Horses arose in North America,
Increased in size, and migrated westward.
Presently, a 'new' invasion of a present
'Modern', larger form has obtained,
Replenishing the space of their progenitors

Similarly, the Khoisan arose in Southern Africa
And were partially replaced,
Not only by the Bantu group,
But by the invading 'caucasian',
Repopulating many spaces
Of their original African progenitors.

Our Diastemas opus 387

When I mention to most people, asking what a diastema is,
The majority do not know--even if they exhibit one!
Of course, it is the space between front upper and/or lower incisors.
I lived with a diastema most of my life,
Until I needed to have partials (deciding that implants were too expensive).
As they were molded, I failed to mention I had a--now non-existent--diastema.
As a result the teeth in my upper jaw are all shifted to the left!
I am beyond vanity at nearly 83, and find it just one more fun talking point.

Having had this condition, I always noticed, especially in black Americans,
That many singers, speakers, politicians who sported a diastema.
My wondering came to an end, after a bit of research.
First, it is an African trait, whites exhibiting one because we are
all basically African!
In Africa (eg Ghana and Nigeria) with European prejudice,
Africans there were not valuing nor enjoying their diastemas,
But with independence, the whole concept flipped into a positive trend.
Today, 95 percent in Africa find MMD's (Maxillary Midline Diastemas)
very beautiful.
Moreover, 95 percent of the diastemaless population wish and actually
want to create one!
Genetically, developmental causes affect as many as 36 percent of black people,
While affecting as few as 3.5 percent in the caucasian population.
We in this country and possibly in Europe
Do not even think about a diastema and its influence on attractiveness,
But now-a-days in Africa and perhaps those in the western world,
Black people are very aware of the little space between their teeth!

African Origins opus 436

I revel, remembering that I had lived in Africa,
Teaching, but also living amongst its people
And other indigenous creatures.
I have also paid visit to the Leakeys' Olduvai,
Where our species' origin may have arisen.
Being there for a time, overwhelmed the spirit
And edified the incredible realization of our origins--
The Sistine Chapel in the Serengeti Plains,
Situated deep in a gorge of the Great Rift Valley.

My Neanderthal Kindred opus 464

While reading 'Kindred' by R. Sykes,
I felt very close to my Neanderthal cousins.
She relates the anthropologic reality of our past fellow Homos.
I began to fantasize what I, as an early hominid,
Would feel upon meeting my first Neanderthal people,
As I, much later in time, migrated out of Africa.
These were heavy-boned beings, hirsute, but upright as I.
My relative hirsutelessness and lighter skin, contrasted me
From these other fellow hominins.
Would I have been afraid, alarmed, or felt a curiosity in a similar creature?
Our communication or language would have undoubtedly been 'foreign'.
But our stone abilities and methods would have been similar--
Both of us have learned 'developed' stone knapping over many eons.
Both of us hunted and chewed the skins for softening in a similar manner.
Both of us had art and perhaps felt the same about caves.
Would we have been attracted sexually
To someone who was exotically different?
We know now from the DNA evidence
That there were a few who overlooked the differences
And left the fascinating DNA trail we witness today.
All I know is that 4 percent of my ancestral past
Overcame prejudice and dislike to form a 'romantic?' bond.

Is Selection Our Mindless Life Guide? opus 594

From my boyhood, and I was a very inquisitive child,
I started learning about mammals,
By first studying all aspects of my childhood domestic rabbits,
And along with that, an intense study of our avian neighbors.
Audubon Camps and bird counts kept me up to snuff.
Of course also dinosaurs--but to a lesser extent than others my age,
Although, later in life, teaching in Africa,
I ferreted out the remnant tracks of the former dinosaur inhabitants,
Making many plaster casts of their plodding on earth in good future sandstone.
Now, even later in life, I am fascinated and overwhelmed
With the 25,000 species of trilobite,
Which densely populated the earth-seas for about 270 million years.
Their morphology and progressive evolution towards greater elaboration,
Was perhaps part of their end; Their ever-more elaborate morphology
For sexual competition getting the best of them.
Remember the Irish Elk with their competing secondary-sexual-character antlers,
With which the males could no longer bear in competition.
This might demonstrate that 'mindless' selection to a 'double' end-adaptation,
Can result where one, 'out-evolves' the other's 'benefit' and extinction occurs!
Perhaps this questions the thought of a loving deity,
Guiding 'all its creatures' to a perfect existence.

Lesotho--Where's That? opus 614

Did you happen to catch it, when President Trump said,
"No one has ever heard of Lesotho."
 (Pronounced LES SOO TOO, a very small Southern African country.)
The subject of Lesotho came up because Trump placed a 50% tariff thereon.
Trump may not have heard of Lesotho, but the Basotho have heard of him.
I, personally, had heard of Lesotho, the country,
Because I was an 'English lecturer' (assistant professor) in their university about 1976.
This country was and still is one of the poorest countries in the world.
When I lived and taught there, the poverty was evident.
Young boys, tending goats in the wild, were still hunting mice,
To be roasted over a small fire, providing a small amount of needed protein.
The hunting weapon was a sharpened stick called a Tsenene.
In the winter, children wrapped themselves in a single blanket,
And walked around with bare feet on a very cold earth-surface.
As I remember, perhaps Denmark (?), had started a clothing company to create jobs.
This infant industry has now grown to produce and become 'the denim capitol' of Africa.
They also produce the golf shirts of clothing, which even Trump himself wears!
The 50% huge tariff, Trump placed on Lesotho because of the 'trade imbalance'--
Lesotho actually exports more to the US, because it is so poor; US products being relatively too expensive.
As a result, their clothing companies are challenged, losing trade because of the excessive prices--
Businesses are closing, workers are being laid off,
And a long fought-for national industry is, because of Trump's complete ignorance of the situation,
experiencing crumbling sources of desperately needed employment.
Meanwhile the tariff has somewhat mercifully been reduced to 15%,
But the Mosotho Secretary of State reports it will require many months for the needed recovery.
Yet one more tragedy in a long line of uninformed legislation.

Dinosaur Footprint Hunting opus 731

While teaching in Lesotho, Africa,
I had my first child, Pierre,
Who at two, 'followed' me around the countryside,
Collecting bees at night 
And finding dinosaur footprints in daylight.
This, all between my biology classes at the University.
One spectacular trip was to a large valley,
Where there were myriads of tumbled sandstone blocks,
Strewn randomly throughout the area.
I slowly walked amongst these boulders,
When suddenly I found my first prints.
A large, three-toed series of impressions,
Spread across the flat surface.
I carried with me plaster of paris, a water container,
Strips of cardboard and a clutch of paperclips.
I made a cardboard border around the print,
Tied together at the ends, with the necessary clips.
Water and plaster were mixed to a soft-solid consistency;
Then poured into the void, the print primed with vaseline.
Several prints were cast and then the waiting time.
Each was pulled up and removed, now in a solid state.
These prints were made in the seventies
And many remain today (2026) on my farm to our delight.
The five decades of preservation here on the farm,
Equals nothing to the 60 million years of waiting in the sandstone,
To be admired by humans today--
They, nowhere to be found during this creature's long past reign.