Inspired by Canto [17]

On her scraped up hands and worn out knees,Trowel scrapes into the earth,Buckets of dirt filling with archival sand and ash,This is the dust left wherever we live and wherever we die,This is the spiderweb that encaptures and entraptures the globe.

This is the breath of laws and songs and behavior, This is the ash from millenia of fire,This is the arrowhead that pierces thousands of hearts,Hearts of soldiers and innocents and kings and servants.

She lifts with gentle handsA sherd of ceramic, coated in the past,What is it to be in the present?This is the past and the present and the future swirled together,A discordance of ancient hymns, war cries, classical compositions,Spun on a pottery wheel, molded into what we call here and now.Each particle a life connected with countless others

A fragment of the past rests in her hands,In your hands,In everyone’s hands, For these are for the endless races of working people and farmers and seamen,These are not fragments of clay,These are fractured bits of experience, philosophy, literature.

One particle holds the gentle hands guiding a boy,Guiding him to chip stones into arrowheads,Fracturing flintstone into careful lessons,Grasping understanding.

Another contains the soft works spoken to a youthful child,Gazing up at the stars as an elder points out constellations,Each star its own story, an intersection of infinite strands of knowledge,Crossing through the complex web in the dark sky.

Another is made of sheets of bound paper,Carefully inscribed with quill and ink,An apprentice leafs through the pages,The world of the writer through ink seeps into their skin.

Another covered by the scrapes on a blackboard,Chalk etching lines,Pencils scratching notes into notebooks,Marking one point of connection, passed soul to soul.

Another molded by the voices joined together in choir,A song flowing into every listener,Passion and word siphoned into open ears,The weight of centuries of emotion ripples through a child’s voice.

These are the thoughts of all in all ages and lands, they are not original with me.If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing.