voices sing from the stone

 

A Cache

gratuitous acts of kindness,

the sense that people can gift you

without expectation of notice,

a sharing that comes from their heart,

a heart that overflows and just needs 

to find a way to express itself,

and share the bounty for which it feels thanks,

in my life I have often felt fate 

to be gratuitous in its gifts to me,

while I feel undeserving of that excess,

whether in partner, in job, in inherent stance toward the day,

all of this musing as if to say a thank-you to the universe

for a cache of prehistoric artifacts I just found,

we had to replace our outbuilding with a rebuilt one

using recovered lumber and a friend’s vision and effort

to construct a smaller version,

more in keeping with our current needs,

I did a bit of digging to channel water 

away from the dirt-floored overhang,

in passing, there, by the new ditch, I glanced down

and was surprised by a large broken spearpoint

revealed by rain from the overhang

which had released the stone from the dirt,

a few inches away another serrated edge reached from the dirt,

a perfect spearpoint, exquisitely chipped of the finest flint,

maybe over 8000 years ago here, 

then I continue to be surprised

by scrapers of assorted shape and function,

a chunky stone made to roll

in a game of aim and exertion,

all of them within one foot of each other,

I often play my eyes across bare ground

in search of one artifact to call out to me from prehistory,

never before has such a chorus answered my desire,

I can almost see those ancient people

here where we have our home for a time,

where they had their home in the first flowering

of humans on this continent,

the cache of artifacts sings

and pulls me toward them in wonder.

by Henry H. Walker

December 15, ‘20