The river is at the heart.

Kunda used to be covered by an ancient lake.

This lake gradually broke its way through the ridge.

As the lake emptied and made its way to the sea, the land of Kunda became bog.

This land was mined for peat, clay, marl and gravel.

The lake fell until it’s trace was only the fast waters of the river.

The currents used for power since the beginning of industry.

The digging found the ancestors.

The small island in the middle of the vast lake was heavily inhabited.

There was a dense littering of artefacts.

The small island is now a gentle sloping mound in the middle of flatlands.

The ridge that held the lake has been carved away, the washed rock taken.

The ridge was a grove, a community, it is now a collapsing burial ground.

The clay of Kunda is a beautiful turquoise and melts to be a deep green.

It is under your feet as you walk.

The empty base of the lake supports us.

What is held within the earth is time.

The past preserved, sinking, and the present scarring.

The landscape is worn.

We are held within it.

The things we leave are broken down.

Submerged, shattered and ground.

The traces of these stories can be heard and found.

Those people on the ridge and the island were some of our oldest ancestors.

The women carried with them the crushed fired earth of the work of their homelands.

They travelled to new settlements to marry and to work.

They kneaded the grog into the clay of a new home.

Continuing the cycle of their elder’s work.

Clay, fired, broken, kneaded, within and within as the line continues.

Redistributed, scattering, migrating.

The vessels created were fine and strong.

Their sherds surviving all that we’ve done.

The water continues to eb and flow.

The wind of the basin washing over mounds as the water of the river pushes through the land.

Forming hollows and pooling in eddies.

We continue to walk over the landscape.

The water and the earth is where we come from.

We couldn’t have existed without it.

The land formed us.

We take but don’t give.

We act but don’t listen.

We will be submerged and engulfed.

We will return there.

 

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