What draws me to read about archaeology
Isn’t just the thrill of more vividly imagining
Lost worlds, it’s the vertiginous wooziness
That comes from turning the telescope
Upside down and considering our horror
Or at least our incomprehensible weirdness
To the people whose remains we’re rooting
About in like a bin, often literally their middens,
If they were to hallucinate one fine afternoon
Down by the temple or at the burial ground
The world that would one day sift them.
Perhaps they believed only God or gods
Would disinter and resurrect them. Perhaps,
They forecast an eternal kingdom of spirits.
See, I read of an underwater discovery
Of a seven-thousand year old burial ground
Off the coast of Florida only yesterday. Likely,
The people who placed their people’s remains
In that spot thought neither of monotheism
Nor kingdoms, and therefore their analogies
For imagining the world of the dead involved
Hunting and maybe stockaded forts, stone
Blades and spirits of beasts, a few now extinct.
Whatever they imagined, I’m willing to bet
My afterlife it wasn’t scuba divers with metal
And plastic tools, laser levels, aqualungs.
We are used to reading about archaeologists.
We imagine archaeologists finding us. Likely
The ends of our remains will be as strange,
Or would be as strange if we could remain,
To us as underwater archaeologists to them.
And there’s a thought to shiver any thought
Given to how I dispose these bones in repose.
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