Information about the past is the past.
The past is information. It can be read
To make more past, more information,
Or it can be left, latent, forgotten until
It disintegrates and is lost. Not the past
Anymore, just more of what never was
Because now it truly isn’t. I knew a post-doc
Once, a taphonomist who dissected
And dated pack-rat middens to reconstruct
Climate history. She had to apply information
To get information, but in those ugly tangles
Of desiccated debris, radiocarbon dated,
She could pull out seeds and pollen to see
What grew, how wet or dry were the seasons,
How little lives shifted through centuries.
Nothing much humbler than old rat middens,
But behold the past elaborated within them!
Enough to envision whole swaths of ecosystems.
A triple ecosystem myself, body composed
Of trillions of microscopic clones hosting
Trillions more of even tinier prokaryotic beasts,
All in turn environment for a mind haunted
By competitive patterns of inherited words,
I, and we, watched daughter’s caged gerbils
Industriously digging through fresh bedding,
Digging tunnels, heaping nests, gnawing
Sticks to papery shreds, rearranging caches.
Occasionally one would dig down to a corner,
Hit glass, but for a while continue digging,
Scrabbling futilely, paws a weird whispering.
I, also we, looked up from where we tapped
At a glass screen of whispering, industrious
Us composing new pasts from old sticks
And fresh bedding. Ah, all so busy, busy,
Ahead of the storms, heaping up middens.
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