A hammer's head
                rebounded through a grove of trees, scattering yellow leaves. "Do
                enlightened beings need
            ear
            plugs?" I asked a man walking in the opposite direction. He laughed,
            and field of plants whispered to me,
            a "soundless, violent explosion  that
            marked the emergence of the angiosperms-—the flowering plants," eons
            before we aimed our first articulate missles at the moon.