Sacred Etchings

Walls stripped bare of time. Symbols shinning through moon phases piled as sand. Carvings of past hunters speak a bewildering code, of lives washed from history. Meaning vanished. Impression conveyed. Time has left the message, and betrayed the creator. His flesh gone language scattered. A people swallowed by disease, and famine, storm and drought, war and disunity. The only evidence of heritage streaks placed on canyon walls. undeciphered pictographs of anonymous origin. And yet I have expectations of meeting the author around a river bend. Hunting the same prey, cleansing in the same stream, tending mutual crops, sheltering similar families, chiseling with ancient tools, upon cliffs of dazzling, pounded sand.