A Cache of Intention
at least hundreds of years ago,
someone gathered treasures of stone weapons, and tools,
and pieces of beauty in rock,
and left them here to rest together:
a perfect spearpoint, from maybe 9000 years ago, maybe more,
from that first golden age of humans upon this continent,
broken spearpoints from maybe a thousand years closer to us,
a chunky stone for a game
from maybe 1000 years ago,
a piece of corded pottery also from that closer time,
for me, each is a treasure,
and I imagine someone long-ago who saw them,
made them, gathered them, appreciated them,
who then gave them to the earth
as a way to give them to something larger than themselves,
I hope to figure a reason, a purpose,
to the gathering and leaving,
why discard the best of what hands make?
maybe you’re saving them,
as if for a tool box, or for mementos,
yet the hypothesis that speaks to me as more likely true
involves a burial here and gifts for the loved one
whose body slips away,
yet whose presence we still feel,
we disturbed the earth by digging
a small trench for drainage by our rebuilt outbuilding,
the rains came and washed obscuring soil away from the artifacts,
I look down and chance to find
a broken spearpoint,
and nearby a perfect spearpoint,
then more broken spearpoints,
added to them, all within a foot of each other,
perfect scrapers,
I usually find big flakes that seem almost accidental to their use,
instead these scrapers are shaped for specific needs, and lovely,
finely-crafted, pleasant to the eye and to the hand,
plus I find bits of black flint and clear quartz, prized materials,
for the indigenous artisans,
the land here lightly slopes to the east,
where the rising sun would shine upon a grave,
maybe there was no intention,
what I found, that of chance,
a random gathering of artistry,
Occam whispers to me, though, to trust my gut
and work to hold an affinity with those long gone who crafted them,
who might have lived, and loved, and sorrowed here.
by Henry H. Walker
March 11, ‘21
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