friday, april 27
fragment
he takes his time
he wanders in the growing dark at the
end of a warm day, the rhythms of this task or that one
carried to their logical end
the tools all put away, the doors all latched
perhaps like me
in these moments he assays
the archaeology of a lifetime; the only unit of
history he can begin to understand
yet the only one that so surely overwhelms
the evidence substantial
but not easy to interpret
the artefacts and traces
fossil tracks and documents
all coherent and compounding
yet he relates to them as an eyewitness
and such testimony is notorious:
confused and unreliable
even the past we've physically traversed
is a territory no more knowable than known