Eric Ashford | + Follow Poet |
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They

Imagine they find your bones
in a boggy field -
it happens all the time,
speaking of which,

time is your pocket handkerchief,
your wristwatch,
and your best evening pants
all reduced to insect dust.

Only a fragment
(a rust-addled skimpy second hand)
remains to be picked up
by the pale flesh 
of a much more efficient brain 
than you or your many cousins
ever had.
The rest of you is much scattered,
much distributed among the small
bog dwelling children of lesser gods.

Ten or a hundred years later they may find 
a distant tooth with its crown intact,
later still, a being reports your broken jaw
unearthed by the sludging rain.
Will they then have enough of your head
to commence a plaster likeness of your
drunken grin after a cocktail party,
or will they find the rest of your skull
in a deeper layer of dirt
with an old crack across its dome.

Perhaps they will assume you died 
at the hands of an axe wielding foe,
never guessing
you fell heavily off your girlfriends Honda
practicing one last incautious wheelie
on a minor road in darkest Derbyshire?
Will the few decimated parts of that Honda 
be thought to be a primitive metallic skeleton
of an ancient sacrificial temple?

When the elements finally reveal
more fractured bits of you
will an artificial intelligence
reassemble your last moments
while misinterpreting
the age and time of your mediocre your life?

Will they solidify your that life
the way we reconstruct diorama’s
of mastodon herds grazing in tall grass,
while illustrating for dramatic effect,
menacingly concealed packs 
of saber tooth tigers lying in wait.

Be very sure to care of your wrist watch,
for they who excavate your posterity
will probably misplace your existence
by at least ten thousand years,

not that you, like the mastodons, will care,
but they might.

Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2021

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