written in sand?

a spear point,

from just after the Ice

“it’s not written in stone,”

a way to express transience,

the ephemeral capriciousness

that can be our moments,

a month ago I was working in the garden,

laying down brown paper to hold down future weeds

that would compete with my Native American pumpkins,

I shoveled dirt over the paper,

choosing places to shovel 

where small rocks topped the dirt,

a week later, after rain, 

I was covering the paper with leaves,

and one rock spoke to me

I picked it up, 

and it was a broken spear-point, 

maybe 8000 years old,

a way to touch that long-gone man and his life,

he wrote with stone,

and the stone point faintly echoes of his life,

I love to feel continuity

with something more permanent

than the sand with which we can live our lives.

by Henry H. Walker

March 24, ‘19