Time in the Rock

Here's a thing: a bright band of desert-varnished stone in the sun. Pictographs chipped into it, gradually through thousands of years fading back to rust, varnished again by time. The thought behind the thing: small brown-skinned carvers, sweating in the sun here, left these marks, carved with their hands these hands, spit-painted their hands over the top layer of crystal: they too were human, were once here, were once living, now gone. As we too shall go on. The rock remains.





Sorcerer hand and heart still gesture. Transform horned man beast to god and back again. Shifting into rock out of time. Gold flowstone banded riverbed tracks layered and lifted into the sun. hand to hand stretched into rock socket flute ring from hills. Hunchbacked fluteplayer live in the amphitheater of time over the valley floor stream trickle down to green river flow stone lamp and star.





And another: here lizards chase each other up the cliff. A face peers from a corner, weathered and cracked. A face, unknown, artist or subject, god or shaman or self, unknown. Rocks speak to each other, rocks that speak for themselves. Over the jagged edge, clouds rise and gather, woolen, rigid.





Into some kind of shelter the painted hands gather. Gods in stone gestures. Gods silent, dancing, captured in cliffs, remaining after the gatherers have gone, after we too shall be gone.