Lucy is the name that was given to the fossil skeleton of an female Australopithecus afarensis. Her discovery changed the way we viewed our early hominin relatives. Lucy lived over 3 million years ago. She has always caputured my imagination. In this prose poem, I speculate about what she might have thought about, and what I have in common with her.
I was ever so happy when We’Moon accepted this piece. It’s in the 2026 We’Moon calendar on page 121, the week of August 10. I’ve always loved the Goddess-centric vibe of the We’Moon calendar, so it was a real joy to have my work accepted by them this year.
Lucy by Alane Brown (c) 2025
Look back, to our most ancient ancestor.
She was small, wiry, furred,
self-awareness just beginning to emerge
from the animal ever-now
On an African savanna she looked at the moon.
Curious eyes watched the cycle
Arc, disc, arc, darkness.
She was the first genius
who realized her bloodtime
matched over and over with a moonphase.
Moon magic, power of knowledge.
Her calendar in the sky.
I purse my lips and sip in the moon’s rays,
call to Lucy within me.
Like her, I take a long cool breath of moonlight.
It fills my lungs, enters my bloodstream,
flows all around my body.
Luminescence enters my tissues.
Moonglow slips into my cells
where Lucy sleeps inside my DNA
My cycle answers the call of her calendar.
My body follows the moon.
Lucy © 2025 by Alane Brown, published in We’Moon 2026: Gaia Rhythms for Womyn, Mother Tongue Ink
The header photo is a reconstruction of Lucy’s face created by Ellywa (from Wikimedia Commons) that was published in this excellent article by the Natural History Museum of London. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/australopithecus-afarensis-lucy-species.html