Spear shafts splintering beneath its collapsing hulk,
the mastodon crashed to the earth,
roared its final lament and fell silent.
Shouts echoed across the ravine.
Dark-haired Clovis hunters converged:
stripping the hide,
carving the flesh.
Others circling the carcass,
traced broken shafts to flint;
gathering them for tomorrow's hunt -
retrieving all save one.
A triumphal fire hissed and snapped,
hurling heat and smoke
high into the mid–day sky.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The archaeologist knelt to the ground.
Heart racing, he scraped dirt from flint,
brushed away millennia of dust
and raised the projectile to the sun shouting,
'Clovis point! '
'Clovis point' - a revelation in the dust:
found inches from the bones of its prey.
Khaki and blue jean clad hunters gathered quickly
to read the epic written in flint and bone:
mastodon and Clovis united by the point of a spear.
Robert Charles Howard
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mastodon-hunt/
