Bodies
       

In a mass grave in the Atacama,
bodies, waiting to be reclaimed,
or not, parch in salt-crusted soil,
and on the hill an observatory
tells them that night offers more
truth because, if all light is old light,
there can be no present in which to live.

They look up and up to where a dying
star collapses, its fury serene,
spewing out billions of borrowed atoms
and the atoms of the drying bodies
wonder what might have been.

Their final thought is always of Pluto,
the ex-planet, gate-keeper
of hell; history will reclaim his
crumbling body just as it reclaims
us all.

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Copyright © 2014 Tim Craven All rights reserved
from New Madrid
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission