Anne M. Homan

Black and White

While I was hiking alongside Morgan Territory Road in the Mount Diablo foothills, an odd pattern amid the gravel attracted me. The small rock I picked up felt comfortable in my hand. Egg-shaped, the smooth black matrix had four white quartz latitudinal stripes of varying widths. Through the long axis on both sides ran a rough hand-chipped groove meant for a leather thong. This charmstone at some time had dangled from the neck of a medicine man or woman. About 1500 years old, perhaps it had been handed down from wise person to wise person until the final remnants of the Volvon tribe left the Black Hills for Mission San Jose in 1806. The stone’s charms could not protect the Volvons from the good intentions of  Spanish friars.

empty mission yard—
a glint of frost
off unmarked graves