And here is one of them: (for readers who may not have access to a copy)
Arrowhead Hunting
The land is full of what was lost. What's hidden
Rises to the surface after rain
In new-ploughed fields, and fields stubbled again;
The clay shards, foot and lip, that heaped the midden.
And here and there a blade or flakes of blade,
A patient art, knapped from a core of flint,
Most broken, few as coins new from the mint,
Perfect, shot through time as through a glade.
You cannot help but think how they were lost:
The quarry, fletched shaft in its flank, the blood
Whose trail soon vanished in the antlered wood,
Not just the meat, but what the weapon cost--
O hapless hunter, though your aim was true--
The wounded hart, spooked, fleeting in its fear--
And the sharpness honed with longing, year by year
Buried deeper, found someday, but not by you.
A. E. Stallings
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