A huge curved tusk in the muck of a pond.

a stone spear point and mastodon bones

dug up in suburbia,

bones and tools from ancient days

 lie under our freeways

football stadiums and homes.

After Ice Age glaciers melted away

mammoths and mastodons browsed the land

pursued by humans with stone spears.

Surely the people gazed up at the North Star,

traveled, gathered, hunted, survived.

Their children laughed and played in

parkas, leggings, boots

their mothers sewed for them

with bone needles: in short,

survival gear.

Trout teeming melt water from glaciers

 gushed and gashed the land and

tranquil mastodons grazed

Michigan’s lush green landscape.

Our mitten retains the memory

of ancient times.

If only stones could speak.