The cave, a discovered diary.
Rock walls, pages of history.
Etchings and markings
A social commentary,
Buried for an eternity.

Lost in a melee
Of storms and hurricanes
And earthquakes shaking.
Depictions of life,
Of civilization in the making.
Messages chiseled
With muscle and blood,
Signs of existence
Where communities once stood
And thrived on the need
Of food through labours,
The skies, the trees
Their pagan saviours.
Dark rains that poured
Before the construction of Zion,
The shifting of contours,
The shaping of horizons.

Art: the first form
Of true communication.
The observing of omens
Through pictorial narration.
Lessons unlearned,
Warnings unheeded
From a time when the promise
Of future was seeded.
Histories left to benefit man
Before possession was borne
And conflict began.

A legacy left, designed by tribes
From an ancient time
For narrators and scribes.
Their duty to record
An ever-changing world
Through parchment and pigment
And the spoken word,
For future species
Of woman and man
To strategise survival,
To project and to plan.
Knowledge more likely
To be buried, interred,
Then discovered too late
For lessons to be learned

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017