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the fossil record
1st annual print edition: June 20, 2004
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#44
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Lascaux in a Yellow Light: Summer Solstice on the Ridge above Lascaux Caves I believe everyone goes to the center of their life one day when all is gathered in and said, and all goes out from there again as if you found the thrown stone that long flew through time to strike just here in the cool breath of a pale yellow dawn. Your long journey has been to cross the ripplerock of time to one high wildflower meadow in France below the boxes of bees; now you picnic among sulfur-yellow butterflies, primrose and oregano. Beside you the Beloved pours out wine, summoning the gods. From this high ridge, the ancient valley opens up below: a medieval village blinks in the distant, mustard-colored light. Beneath your hill, the cave descends; at chamber’s end, the auroch, ibex, mammoth, and man. A fingerbone layer of clay preserves painted horses running in the dark, the hanged man hidden down at the end of an impossible crawl; all, have been here before you, a cavalcade of mammal lives, winking in and out of marigold dark and light, beneath the wildflower hill. High noon closes drowsy eyes, kisses now and wine, honey in the hive— all gathered in and sung out loud clearly as a Cro-Magnon child’s song piping aching sweet as a faun’s flute. Now all the flashing ripples of your life will move with spiral surety, mysterious with gravity, to work their work of time. Down from the cream-colored cliffs of memory, down from limestone cliffs, rich with old bones and flint-knapped tools, ruffs of reindeer hairs stiffened with ochre, the charcoal stick, and the manganese pen all fall toward that distant river as if thrown into the golden mirror of the sun. On the other side of a yellow madder moon, the rising ripples of folded land that you must cross move away all ways. You are waiting for the slung arc of the hunter’s sling that will propel you back just here— to one high meadow in France humming honey-rich with sleepy bees and all of Lascaux at your feet. —Sandra M. Jensen |
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