The shadow of a small airplane ripples
briefly over where once warm currents flowed;
creatures whose desperate efforts to survive
gapes of sudden maw or slow starvation
remain impressed upon bedrock layers;
sometimes, in the gullies after hard rain,
erosion exposes an arrowhead,
a wagon wheel, chipped stones, battered tins, bones
of animals and people who ventured
beyond tethers of settlement and tribe
or strung out behind the herd to be cut
off by mishap, by illness, by violence.
In the roll of these flint hills I see shades
of ancient tides; uneven swathes of grass
hint at trails refusing to be buried.
Yet, it's not by sight I know the hills best.
The scent of earth is not so different
from sweat, from seed, from tears, from blood, from sea
from what's passed, what's passing, what's yet to pass
along this way: the smell of you and me.