Tools

by Pat Valdata

Tools  by Pat Valdata

The expert flint knapper holds
a hunk of white rock as big as 
his left hand. With his right, 
he smacks the large rock with 
a smaller, harder one. Whack.

One flake falls off, exposing sharp,
shiny gray flint. Whack. Whack.
Whack. Flakes pile up at his feet.
Down one side then the other  whack
he smashes the small rock  whack

against the larger, creating  whack
what we’d call a razor-sharp  whack
edge on both sides, leaving one  whack
rounded end uncut to form  whack
a handhold. This, he explains, switching 

now to a hammer made of elk antler
to hone the edge even more  tap
is the Stone-Age equivalent  tap
of a Swiss army knife. Anyone  tap
with basic skill and a chunk  tap

of flint can make a hand axe, just
as they’d done in this same spot
two hundred thousand years ago. 
This archeologist can look at a
hand axe in a museum and tell 

from the pattern on the edge 
exactly how it was made, see
mistakes like one he just made,
because, he says, laughing,
that old feller and me, we’re 

only human.