In the museum of my kitchen,
I excavate the strata of days,
coffee rings on the counter like tree rings,
each circle marking a morning survived.
The clock on the wall is a liar,
pretending its hands move forward
when really they spiral inward,
tightening like a fist around memory.
I find artifacts everywhere:
a receipt from three years ago,
a shopping list in handwriting
I recognize but can no longer claim as mine.
Time doesn't pass, it accumulates.
It settles like dust in corners,
builds up like plaque on teeth,
layers itself like sediment in stone.
Yesterday exists in geological time:
compressed, fossilized, permanent.
Tomorrow is still vapor, still forming
in the atmosphere above my head.
But today?
Today is the thin line
where excavation meets deposition,
where what I've been becomes
what I'm busy burying.
I am both archaeologist and artefact,
both the digger and the dug,
slowly revealing myself to myself
one careful brushstroke at a time.
How is it we are drawn towards
the better angels in our minds,
the ones that lift and help us drift
beyond our space and time?
What causes us to question
who we are and whence we came;
the reason for existence writ large,
from stars to drops of rain?
Who was the first man, woman, child
to shift their gaze up high,
and feel the stir of something deep
and loving in the sky?
And why do we keep asking
Who, what, why, when, and where,
will we ever find the answer
to what lies beyond thin air?
Why ask about those old dead Greeks
and the way they lived back then?
Who cares about lost empires,
and their enemies and friends?
Why be concerned with philosophy,
archeology, science, math?
Could there be a Master Mind somewhere
that set us on this path?
As humans, who like angels,
too often barely comprehend,
the nature of our nature
is to rise like vapor, to ascend.
And thus, we keep on questioning
and beckoning to know,
the reason we keep asking,
is in our hearts and blood that flows…
Hidden treasures in our veins,
raging rivers of insight,
with all the answers we’ll ever need
lay in slumber late at night.
I am extinct, the way some pachyderms are
while others are not.
Ice fields turn to desert,
wind-straws evolve into sun hats.
An archaeologist wearing a straw hat
discovers my skull.
She crouches down, sweeps a small brush
over my partly exposed dome.
I like her fingers.
they cup, and they measure,
they feel the weight of things dispersed,
they honor what remains.
The dimpled flesh over her knees
kisses the earth. I like the shady eclipse of her.
She sweeps dust from my eye-sockets;
I recall wind and sky.
She gently tugs
me from the earth,
carries my emptiness away.
An era rides a sleep-walking tortoise.
I count footprints in an Alzheimer's ward.
Rain clouds are my dreams.
Time buries its layers. I am underneath
the above again.
A lady archaeologist wearing a sun hat
discovers my skull.
She’s nice.
Questions like:
who, what and where
do not arise.
I
Salvation is the first freedom of humanity
"*****Sapiens," self-defined, "Wise Man" from
Africa, Olduvai Gorge, the Rift Valley, experts say
Research especially why we are special: conundrum -
Every BOOK (& Bible) said we are SPECIAL, mutes (The Academy)
II
Let us not give too much to religion, nor too less
It has been a way to bind people, to overcome the terrors
From far away and near, of Nature and nurture
Everyone is someone only because of THE OTHER ONE.
NOTE: I used the scientific term for our species, "*****SAPIENS" & the editing software, or editing human here, thought I was being prejudiced. We all have hidden prejudices, but that was not mine in this poem. just "*****sapien." (c) Anil S. DEO, shalom shalom (Peace & wholeness to all life) amen
Millennia of stories in
Earth’s archives;
tales told of every species.
Text book of life,
bone history class,
is always in session.
Sphinx
Sits on
Burning sands
Sunning herself
In the noonday sun
She needs no chaise
She is a
Bedrock
Sphinx.
Dig Down Deep
Carefully Unearth
Artifacts Will Speak
Words of Worth
With Pick and Shovel
And Papyrus
If Block and Rubble,
Gently Brush
Treasures Buried
Deep In Soul
Heart-Stone Quarry
Hold Hidden Scrolls
To Royal Edicts
Read and Call
Hieroglyphics
On High Walls
In Expeditions
To Exposé
Show Gold Emotions
In Glass Display
From Pyramids
In Sealed Mystery
So The Poet Did …
… Archeology
To Preserve Words
of Antiquity
So That You Heard
and Shared, Discovery …
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