Day to recalibrate, and a poem

I gave myself a day off paid work today to get caught up on life stuff. 

I did the morning drop-off run. I went to the doctor, the pharmacy, and the optometrist. I did a big grocery shop and the meal planning for the next 10 days. I cleaned the kitchen properly, and watered and weeded my courtyard plants. I did the autumn quilt wash of my big Amish quilt (I wash it twice a year, in spring and autumn). I did my 30-minute weights and stretches routine that my trainer devised for me, and I took the dog for a walk. I paid bills and scheduled a bunch of appointments and meetings. I made a big batch of vegetable soup to take out to my parents. (And yes, I sat down with lunch and a book for an hour too!) 

It was a life-productive day, and I think I will return to the work tomorrow refreshed for taking it. It's one of the great benefits, for me, of being a freelancer, and thus my own boss - when there are no pressing client deadlines (and there was only one of those this week, on Wednesday night, and I met it) I can choose to reprioritise when I need to, so I can account for family, health and general life logistics needs.

While going about my business, I listened across the course of the day to a history podcast about Stonehenge (archaeology-based, not mythology-based, although honestly I also really enjoy a good flight of fancy about the woo-woo factor of those giant rocks). One of the interesting things I learned from it is that the people who built Stonehenge disappeared both archeologically but also genetically some 100 years or so after the first waves of immigrants from mainland Europe started arriving. We have no records, texts or physical artefacts from these people, so we really don't know anything definitive about them, which of course does not stop the speculation.   

I have never been to the UK, and therefore of course have not been to Stonehenge, but I have enough of an imagination to get drawn in to these stories, and to think about both the deep strangeness of the past and the ways in which we might still find a thin thread of connection to it. So, as I sat with my late afternoon cup of tea, feeling quite satisfied with what the day brought, I wrote this poem.

Builders

Sometimes I think about the people who built up giant stones in perfect circles
lugged them down rivers and across hills and through grassy barrens and dubious forests
using (maybe) boats, (maybe) pulleys
or maybe mostly a lot of sweat and straining sinew
in time too far past to be known
and stood them up where they wanted them to go
calls to the sun or the moon or the gods
monuments to the dead or the harvest or to kings and their victories
ways to read the tracks of the stars across the night
or perhaps all of this, or none of it

and I think how strange it is that nothing of that people survived
not in the DNA, not in the stories even
but the rocks survived and go on surviving
knowing what they know, but never saying

and I wonder if those people knew, if they had a sense or a feeling
that everything that they were would pass away
that they would fall to the west like the sun does, but never rise again
not even a whisper in the genome left behind to say:
we were here
children, remember
just the occasional bone to testify that they trod the earth at all 

the archaeologists say we don't know who they were or why they did the things they did 
why they consecrated the places they chose for their stones
whether they looked to the sky for answers, or down into the earth
whether they buried their dead in the shadow of the stones for fortune, or honour, or piety, or revenge
whether they sang to the rising sun as the stones shot dark fingers across the ground

or whether they danced

together before the great stones they raised
borne up like summer flowers in the solstice light
feeling, or not feeling, the first kiss of the changing 
as the wind blows, and blows, and blows 
all the dust of the flowers away.