I.

For starters, there are dinosaurs with peanut brains
who through dumb luck got stuck in tar where,
eons later,
their remains were found like scattered beads.
Then scientists restrung the bones
and put the great primordial molars in glass cases
so visitors could say WOW and wonder at the way life was
In The Beginning.

Now, as for me, what teeth I've lost so far
were bought by fairies for a dime
and I'm quite sure the fairies tossed my teeth into the trash
and any sign of them has long since disappeared.

II.

Then take the farmer, plowing up a field.
He hits on something hard. He stoops,
his fingers probe, yield up a stone where he can see
the outline of a fabled fish,
its spine etched for eternity upon the rock.
Then crowds flock the museum for a look
at what lived in this place way back then
when water covered the north forty.

When I was small in winter
I would throw my body to the ground
swing legs and arms
leave cherub wings celestial garments on the snow.
The sun surveyed my mark upon the world
my ice-age frieze
and fallen angels wept themselves to slush.

III.

Suppose in Africa, deep in the cliched sands of time,
some tracks turn up
and Dr. Leaky, on his haunches, hrummphs,
My hunch is we have stumbled on a trail
left by a hominid who measured four foot eight
and walked erect three point six million years ago
and from this evidence we know his name was
Australopithecus Afarensis.

Well, in my day I've run along the beach
dug heels and toes into the sand
and standing there have watched the waves erase each footprint,
leaving not a trace that I have been.

IV.

Consider, please, my problem with Pompeii.
Most peasants in Pompeii lived unassuming lives.
Plebeian husbands, humble wives
who worked and slept and woke
and by a stroke of fate were stopped dead in their tracks
by a stupendous belch.
Ordinary folk who, by their very act of dying,
(oh, I will grant you, it was flashy)
left us no denying they had lived.

Unless I'm stuck in cataclysmic glue,
to be exhumed some light-years hence by aliens from another sphere,
I fear that what Koheleth wrote is true.
My bones will vanish like the fragile grass
that grows and blows above my grave.
Good grief.

V.

My point is made.
The race for immortality is run on dead end streets
(small pun intended)
and if our hieroglyphs befuddle only bats
in undiscovered caves,
well... so it goes.
Come pour another glass, dear George.
Let's drink to us
and all the other hoboes on the train.
We're coming, Ozymandias!
Yet now,
before we turn the bottle upside down,
before the cooks go home,
please shine the candle full upon my face.
Preserve me with your stare
so I may bloom each summer in your garden of blue iris.