Field School in the Centennial Valley

Well past dusk we throw axes at a stump.
We desire, above all, to be lethal. Barbaric 

and red, the moon rises 
over plains trackless, yet trodden,
inhospitable, yet occupied—
eclipsing its light, skeins of geese pass overhead.

Once there was a war. Others
before that. Long days searching fields—
discovering the ultimate tragedy:
that the perception of a thing will become it.  

Peculiar: the head of an atlatl 
offers itself to discovery. 
A relic indiscernibly vital—
now a weathered datum.

In the evenings we learn
to knap stone. Chert and quartzite
flakes bleeding our hands. Dusk surrounds
us beneath the old watchtower. 

Hanging from porch, the maroon
feeders have been refilled 
and the hummingbirds are fighting 
over their most westward flowers. 

Glinting with starlight, the dust of hunters and warriors swirls.
Old battles pardon themselves from memory. 

This place in this time—
the microcosm of a microcosm of a history,
an atavism of affliction and attrition. 

And everything that evades knowing. 

From the watchtower