you can find them lying here
chipping flakes blanks arrowheads
obsidian spearpoints granite hammers
burial pits roundhouses longhouses
pottery shards stone pestles smooth round game stones
grinding stones and flint drills
strange-looking discs
stone scrapers by the dozens
you can find them lying here
bedded in kames eskers moraines hedgerows
loughs and chaotically distributed hummocks
lodged in spines of flying squirrels hooves of buffalo
mounds of clams and mussel shells
piled higher than a grown man's head
smoked legs feet and skulls of white tail deer
food remains evidence of cooking fires
shamans wearing masks whale bones the wings of ravens
the grave of a campdog
in a field on a hill in sand in moss
in pickle grass phragmite mud
in kettlehole and drumlin
under shoe plow toe heel
beside the lumbering tread of tractor tire
in the sweet drift of snow
under a horizon of prairie grass
you can find them lying here
undisturbed except for the steady wind
undisturbed in bend of river bed of pond
undistrubed in harbor meadow grove of trees
buried in fresh white pebbles
buried with tamed wolves or sabertooth
pleistocene lions woolly mammoth
buried in a track of dire wolves
on soft footpads of the great sloths
they do not live with us here today but they are here they live
among us and inside us and you can find them
lying in the dense hip the broken clavicle
the antler gourd cleft hoof the heavy muzzle
in chert and other fine grained silica
in rich rock chalcedony
with spores pollen peat bogs
with peccary snout and clay pipehead
in a perfect sheet of mica you can still see through
if you hold it up to the sun
cut into the form of a bird claw or a human hand
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Rio:
A Journal of the Arts