stone cut man

I scrape clay from a stone
with a miniature trowel,
scratching at the earth
that obscures its shape.

One hundred thousand years ago,
a common group of men and women
(not yet tribe, not gaggle)
followed migrating deer
along the north bank of an
unnamed river.

From the clay bed
a sphere,
vaguely headlike? emerges.
I scratch with my trowel
earth from eyes,
or what I think may be
eyes, and they open out of limestone.

Skin painted, black hair braided,
draped in iridescent shells,
he broke from the disorganized stream
of Homo sapiens skirting the river. Noticing
a stone beneath an eddy of whitewater,
he thought, in uncertain terms,
‘that looks like I look,
they,
we

I think I see
what could be shoulders, a chest.
I blow aside loose sediment.

He lagged behind. He turned the stone
in his hand. His thumb surveyed
the groove that split the middle
of the bottom half of the stone.

Legs. I see feet
emerge from earth.

He turned the stone in his hand,
tracing with his thumb
irregular divots on its upper sides.

Arms. Hands
chipped onto clumsy wrists.

He realized he carried a stone man.

A stone cut man. I brush away the last bits of dirt
that mask its form. I lift it towards the sun
and squint to find its detail.

On a quiet evening, warm,
he rested against moss on a boulder
after a large meal. He scratched a deer tooth
into the groove down the middle
of the bottom half of the stone
and repeated the motion:
up down,
up down,
up down

Later
there were legs,
arms, fingers,
a head. He turned stone into man
and when he died many years later
the others left it with him,
returning to earth
that from which they came.