Rosetta Stone

Henry and his cousin Joe Karate
were in high school
when one day

they explored an ancient creek-bed
behind The Acme Brick Company,
the creek runs for miles

through black soil
until it gets near the hills,
just before it empties

into the Guadalupe River
where boulders and rocks
litter the creek.

That’s where Henry and Joe Karate
found many wondrous fossils,
that’s how it’s come about

that forty something years later
Henry holds this amazing stone
in his hands.

It’s the fossil of a claw
in the act of grasping
and a feather on the other side.