dig

In the middens of our minds

We mill about the margins

Watching lovers, friends

And other fanged beasts

Paw through the rubbish

In search of clues, treasure

Of answers to our riddles

Reasons for our rhythms

Seasons in heart’s rhymes

Patterns in the dust

Times past illuminate

Say those who excavate

The heaps of detritus, decay, despair

That litter our preliterate cranium;

Spinal cortex, shadows of the Id

Animal instincts we cannot explain

Nightmare and reflex, remembered

Memories in amber, caught with flies,

Mummified, calcified, fossilized

In levels, like tree rings or rock strata

We watch these independent observers

Dissect and direct us, in labile labs

We writhe under pitiless knives

Lives expended, explored, exhumed;

We watch mute, helpless as these

Self appointed surgeons

Archeologists of the Soul

Lay out who we were, are, as if

For a morgue’s steel tables

Or the impersonal eye of God