Ancient Wellsprings

CATEGORY

long distance

At some dig site
… far away

Obscure dry riverbeds…
Offer their bounty
To archeologists of today
As they dedicate their lives
To recreate the patterns of living
Which have so far, allowed our species to survive
Despite, if not due to our latent inconsistency
…strive to reconstruct the days and nights
Of fellow members of our human family
To try and gather among what little remains
Some glimmer of insight
Of long lost ancient ways
Seen in a different time of light…
Sifting through the grains
…of sands that have seen
So many dreams
Places to rest,
Became dwellings…
Evolved into places
Of greater permanence
Into the current state of circumstances
As our present day suggests
What could have been…
Once
A river valley
A forest,
Then a drifting plain…
Eventually
There were firesides
Where people learned to speak openly
About the passions of their lives
Where the faces of who’d survived
Another winter
...realized…
A sense of purpose,
Came to rely
Upon one another
As allies, more so
…than versus

Where now
Majestic mountains rest
…there reside
Reminders of a day
So long ago
We realize the changes
We have undergone
To continue to be
Numbers of bands of us
We survivors
Not only continued to rise in number
But, seems …to expand exponentially
Buildings continued to take new shapes and forms
Becoming more complex structurally
Reflecting not only our pride in accomplishment
…our propensity to gather in a sense of greater security

To greater heights of utility,
Based upon the ability of the occupants
To provide for those with whom they shared
And cared for one another
And kept those who slept inside
Safe, warm and free from harm
Places of living had long come and gone
As families made and broke ground
Fortunes rose and fell
Abandoned eventually
As the people grew beyond
And moved on
Into different lives
Than they had known
Leaving traces of their past
To break apart and drift away
Sometimes into obscurity
And as each successive wave
In the tide of changes came
What was… disintegrated
Into tiny particles
Burned by the sun
And torn by the wind…
Back into its component parts
Its spirits come and gone
…like water…
Leaping back into the skies,
Draining into the earth
Running to the sea

Beyond the memories of what was …is like
A cascading waterfall once and forever
Softly illuminated with the spark of life
As it flows gently on through the river of time
…a lifeboat of forgotten souls
Whose chance of life
Has come and gone
Forever adrift into the star fields
…of distant shores
Like sparks lit and fading softly away
Turned into sleep into a deep eternal night
Are oft forgotten echoes lost?
In the spiritual well
Whose comings and goings
Are left
Somewhere between imagination
And the course of life
A path chosen
And the place
Where new paths were created
Where there was no path
Like now you ask
Where do we go from here?
The answer lies before you
It’s simple …look into
The past

C2