Random Acts of Poetry

Digging

Low hills on Channel 13
cup a reverence
around a hole in the ground.

Diggings and scrapings
with garden tools
echo off dead crater walls

where life once extended
like a run-on sentence,
adding too many centuries.

The digger carries on, carries
his leathery body
like a sack of pipes,

eyes bright chisels
chipping at strange mounds, reveling
in broken dishes

and the trash of the ancients.
Who were these stone-faced people,
God's voiceover asks,

so proud of their mallets
and ugly jugs?
What totems did they bow to?

Who are these doctors,
picking through bones and teeth
like patient grave robbers

while thousands lounge on couches--
we peepers, safe in our millennium,
anxious to fathom a mystery pit.

And what does dusty litter
whisper about those
who might fear demons,

we curious gods gazing
through the flickering squares
of the future?