Knife Made of Stone - Song Page
©
from the album Out on the Tallgrass Prairie
Album note:
Two-part song about an ancient stone knife bridging a millennium: first, early Indigenous woman loses her knife in the creek, and centuries later, a modern woman finds it, wondering who held it last?
ABOVE ILLUSTRATION: Original watercolor by artist Terra Coons of White City, Kansas - illustrating the two stories in this song: same place, two different millenia.
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Another rendering - illustrating this story - in charcoal by artist Terra Coons.
Stone knife - Greenwood County, Kansas
LYRICS
The morning sun glittered in waves of pure gold
On the creek bank that day long ago.
While a young woman worked, in her hand she had hold
Of a beautiful knife made of stone.
At the creek-side she knelt with a bundle of plants
She’d found in the prairie that day,
Trimming the shoots and washing the roots
While her child was nearby at play.
She was using this tool she treasured the most,
The finest of all that she owned:
A wedding gift made from her father’s own hands-
A beautiful knife made of stone.
Then she heard a sharp cry that filled her with fear.
Her eyes quickly searched all around.
Her child had wandered out into the water.
The current was pulling him down.
She’d dropped the stone knife to run save his life,
And managed to just catch his hand.
She pulled him to safety and held him so close,
Lying breathless upon the dry land.
That whole day she searched for the knife she had thrown.
She combed through the water and rocks.
But finally went home without her fine stone,
Sadly accepting its loss.
Could she ever have known her knife made of stone
Would cross over boundaries of time.
A new soul would hold her lost treasure of old
And wonder who left it behind.
A thousand years passed as it quietly lay
Protected from heat and from cold.
Neath blankets of mud from the centuries’ floods,
That beautiful knife made of stone.
The morning sun glittered in waves of pure gold
On the creek as I floated alone,
When I saw in the tall bank of deep river soil,
The fine scalloped edge of a stone.
From its thousand-year shelf, I lifted and held it,
Cradled and cool in my hand.
I pondered this treasure - a portal through time
To the deep magic past of this land.
Who made this knife? How was it used?
And who was the last one to hold
This treasure of old - much greater than gold -
This beautiful knife made of stone?
Could its owner have been a woman like me?
A mother and busy young wife?
The knife was the same, but the world had so changed.
I wondered about all their lives.
Could they ever have known their knife made of stone
Would cross over boundaries of time.
A new soul would hold their treasure of old
And wonder - who left it behind?
And wonder - who left it behind?