Poem-a-Day

In the year of providence, in the year of vast greenery, in the rainy season, 
when the creeks tore through the mountainside and flooded the fields,  
when the rains cut great black gouges in the hill behind the church  
so the bones poked through where graves once were— 
In the chaotic days, in the days of mess and brilliance, in the scatter 
of bones, of coffin splinter and bits of cloth where we scavenged 
among the decayed in the afternoon mists—such treasures we  
discovered, coins with faces no one knew, a crucifix golden in the sun,  
a ring and a brooch. We were children and wild, enjoyed the muck and loam  
until the old priest waved his shotgun in the air and we scattered, laughing. 
And then such a silence while we hid among the roots and bones 
of the ancient dead. I have never been happier than that.  

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I wrote those lines three years ago, imagining decay I’d never see, 
though perhaps you have lived something like it where you are, 
hundreds of years from now, when I have been forgotten. 
In that iteration, they are my own bones poking from the loam 
behind the wrecked churchyard of my imagination. And you, whom I’ll  
never know, pick happily through them for coins. I was thinking about this poem 
at the grocery store, by the refrigerated meats, I was thinking of my distant future, 
and you who live there, when an old man fell suddenly to the floor.   
He lay there beside a broken mayonnaise jar. When I knew he wasn’t hurt,  
I helped him to the bathroom, where I dabbed at his shirt  
with one of those brown paper towels that come on endless rolls.  
He was sweating. He smelled of wine. He offered me $5 for my trouble.  
I didn’t want his money, but I took it just to make him happy.