Sailing stone, Death Valley

Oldest scribe
yourself the pen
scratching lines into clay
ten times ten thousand years
before we made such marks of our own

We soon abandoned the old ways
grew tired of pushing the line
the endless line
but you knew
the truth of the line
comes from a pen
in the elemental grip
of time’s unfolding

You write raw history
told you by wind and water
direct, uninterpreted
“this is what happened”

Your secret truth beguiles us
we of monkey patience:
we see only evidence of impossibility
under tight-lipped sunlight
and do not believe.