Sick shovels chip away the mantle

and arrange archaic debris of

predecessors heavy on the shoulders

of family already creaking and clinging

sticky with their own tears and no one else's.



I know that sound they make like

church bells or sharp jabs all familiar to

those who have dug desperately

for relics or relief from dusty ache of fading

I've been the archeologist



He was too, he framed old bones

again in red dirt that touched the warm oily sun

now long covered and made rotted molten

to think of resting voice or heavy steps there

now foreign sediment a young terrible fossil



There have been some who try to reach the core

and some who are lowered in.