Howard Firkin
Preserved in lines of sedimentary verse
my life is left a fossil no one's found,
still locked in rock and buried underground,
or weathered into dust the winds disperse.
I hope it blows your way. I hope you sneeze.
I lived in tropic jungle or beneath
a long dry sea, surrounded by those other
life forms that the sea mud failed to smother;
but I impressed vague tracks, odd bones, bad teeth:
a pointless preservation no one sees.

Most seeds will never seed; most fossils stay
entombed and never studied, polished, shown,
discussed, or argued over. That's okay.
The dark is comfortable. It's all I've known.