the murmur from the stone

 I ache for continuity

what can I know of earlier peoples

who lived upon this land,

who lived within this land?

who walked these same hills, valleys, streams?

who wrested a life from the forest here, long before us?

out West the Indigenous peoples still have a large footprint,

their ancestors worked their souls into petroglyphs, 

crafted shapes on the rock,

back East the Indigenous peoples are still here 

but severely diminished in numbers, in their footprint,

the abundant water here works hard to dissolve the traces of their lives,

like the bulldozers of the new people, both erasing the past with impunity,

most of what I know of native peoples here

comes from stone artifacts

that survive water's power of forgetfulness,

last week I found a quartz spurred graver,

the theory is that earlier peoples used it 

to work on bone or leather,

here on our acre I have found 

and savored projectile points from long-ago epochs,

I have imagined them in use, imagined them in creation,

I have sought to feel that older world from such clues,

what most speaks to me

is a soapstone pendant, the like of which no one 

at the University of North Carolina's archeology department 

had ever seen, in their vast collection,

I guess that it was a pendant worn around the neck,

maybe made from soapstone quarried just north of us,

years after I found it, we did work on an outbuilding nearby,

one day I looked down and found a plethora of artifacts,

 a "cache," all within a foot of each other,

on the top of the ground exposed by rain-powered revelation,

our guess is that these stone treasures

were buried with someone deeply loved,

who maybe was buried with the soapstone pendant around their neck,

gorgeous projectile points, impressive scrapers, a chunky stone, 

lovely pieces of flint and clear quartz, a potsherd,

gathered and given to accompany them on their next step,

we feel a commonality with those folks,

from maybe a thousand years ago,

right here where we find home,

I crave to forge a continuity,

a connection with those long-gone,

imbued in the stone traces that still speak of their life.

by Henry H. Walker

July 22, ‘26