Stratigraphy

"I headed for Missoula like a homing pigeon." ~ G. Wright

Consider the poetry of layers,
If you don't mind the imperative form:
Stacked like pancakes for cartoon appetites,
That which we have now learned to call the past,
Gravitating down to countable lines,
Is all there, in front of us, all at once,
Whatever's left to us of what was once.
One is tempted, if human, to narrate,
And if the story's a compelling one,
Tempted to forgive the breaks and fault lines

That have nothing to do with narrative
Or time--or space, except in the absence
That reminds us our reminders are bits
Piled high like plates, newspapers, old notebooks,
Stone slabs we meant to cobble together
Ourselves one day into a wandering
Line we could call a passable story
Of our own. We were there once, we insist,
Reading between the fossils and the lines.
We are part of this, part mysterious.