Excavation

07 September 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/09/excavation/

I never understood what they thought there was to win
in this world gone haywire, with nature run amok
and mankind sliced adrift from his origins. No,
all are losers here, all are forgotten by time
and left lonely by walls they can never tear down.
But across the way one hears church bells and thinks,
here some know how to live. But to my dismay
I find more of the same, and an arrogance
blinding to spirit, a Wille zur Macht, the forsaken
refusing to be forsaken. But what if tradition
never died, but sleeps, in our hearts, in our stories,
in our words? There would be some need for excavation.

--

But is there room for digging
in the garden, near the burial plots,
beneath the tree of life?
Or is there only land enough
for one or the other?

--

Maybe we just need smelling salts
to shake us from our slumber, to awaken love
of the most careful kind. Or maybe
love is folly and can't be careful,
starting as it must with strikes of lightning,
and then blazing beyond all bounds.
So what have we then? Playthings
of the gods, we scamper on, through thick
and dense dark foliage, letting some things sleep
for as long as they can.