Archaeologists

                You and me,
A couple of archaeologists,
Comparing pasts against
                Origins,
Placing them on mantles,
Or shelves as trophies.
                Naming them,
Stripped of humanity,
Denuded of skin:  relics.

                Then I stopped.
Erasing them from history,
Forgetting some were my own,
                Still in me.
I crammed them into closets,
In crates and boxes, piles,
                Skeletons.
Bedpost notches—calcified
Knots worn—sanded smooth.

                You and me,
You kept digging and dig still,
For some future from the past,
                Fecklessly.
Excavating yet, the same site,
Leaving little for the future’s
                Bone-diggers.
You tunnel vertically, deeper,
Chipping chisels and
                Diamond tips,
Until the bones—heaped high
By your hovel—faceless, nameless
                And skinless,
In veins without blood,
Are naught but broth:
                Black soup:
                                   oil.

Just three feet off the path,
                A Ruddy Dadderwing land and flit
                On a storm-felled, dry rotted cypress branch,
                Or an ivory millipede soft-scrunch,
                Over a patch of bared  and sandy soil,            
                Or a White-breasted Nuthatch’s nest,
                Formed of holly twigs and Spanish moss,
                A snake slither overfoot,
                A tailless lizard scamper,
                Deer tracks,
                Duck dung,
                Life.

Just three feet off the path,
                An aged homeless man up close,
                His fetid breath formed on pained whispers,
                Or a shopkeeper opening doors,
                Or just-ripe peaches piled high,
                Or vibrant, cut Crinum Lily buds
                Waiting for vases by foyer divans,
                Stacks of damp newspapers,
                Kids fallen from bicycles,
                Gardens,
                Litter,
                Life.

                Off the sidewalk or the trail,
                Just a hop—a lunge—away from civil safety,
                (Nevermind roads less traveled,
                Nevermind trailblazing the cosmos):
                Disrupt with steps from trodden ways,
                In claiming others’ nearness—
                In staking out the parallel—
                In stalking periphery:
                                                Walk in mud; dirty shoes.
                                               Shake branches; callous hands,
                                                Feed hungry; taste need,
                                                Drop dollars intentionally.
                                                Stand in traffic,
                                                Stack garbage,
                                                Smudge mirrors,
                                                Strip naked,
                                                Sully nests,           
                                                Scream,
                                                Stop.
                Re-path,
                Then see
                Life.       

Third Half

There was me,
And there was you.

                There was me and I was whole.
Before there was us,
                I did not need for anything or anyone.
Before there was us,
                I was sated and filled.
Before there was us,
                There was me and there was you:
                                Two perfect halves.
Before there was us,
                I did not know I required you.

Valent, hungry Hydrogen
And Oxygen-formed.

                And together, made a whole.
                And we did not need for anything or anyone.
Then there was us,
                And we were sated and filled.
                And there was you-and-me:
                                A Perfect-Perfect.
Then there was us,
                And we knew we were essential.
 
Our waters swirled and merged:
Splashing, waving, vesseled,
And completed.
 
And now,
                We are more than whole,
                We are exponential.
                We are more than companions.
And now,
                We are everything and everyone,
                We are more than fulfilled,
                We are drunk and fatted.
And now,
                We are more than a clan:
                                We are Third Half.
                We are more than co-vital,
                We are a utopian megalopolis.
And now we are luxuriant,
                                copious,
                                                excessive,
                                                                diluvian.

Swollen beyond our banks:
Uncontained and overflowing,
Bursting, tsunami’d.

And, I love
us.