Ancient American History

A poem about the possibility of the memory of stones.

Ancient American History 

Regarding their discarded but illustrious origins,
these slabs of broken concrete that lie beneath
this overpass know everything: How the chieftains 

of their ancestor boulders stood above a river 
in northern Arizona, eons and eons ago, and lifted
up their faces to the sun-god for example;

or the day they made peace with the talons
of the eagle and gave shelter and comfort
to the spider and the snake in their tents 

of cool shade. Sometimes late at night
when the traffic is low and the moon is adrift
on the starless horizon, they speak in hard tones

of the years they became buildings in cities
across the plains, or the children they had lost
to the construction of sidewalks and highways.

But mostly they speak of the waters--snowmelt
and the rains that washed across their shoulders

--the rivulets and the streams that bathed them.

 

© Mark MacDonald 2013