High Views, Dry Caves, Fresh Lakes

Minds will leave a trace as well,
Once all your bones are old stones.

But who will come to read it,
If not more mind? This goes on

As it has for some time—lives,
Texts, minds, and signs of each age

All parse the past in some way
And think they’ll be parsed the same,

Though no two ways are the same,
And no way stays the same long.

Who reads the Greeks as they read
Crete? Who reads the Han as they

Read Bronze Age mounds or Kong Zi?
Who reads the first books in print

The way they yearned for lost greats
From when gods’ eyes still wore paint?

No one will read your great heaps
Of stone and steel and baked oils

The way you read tombs and hoards,
And that’s not to say you’ll go

Too soon for the great ape kind
To change in mind one more time,

A few more times. By the time
There’s no soul left in the world

Who’s fond of dry caves, high views,
Fresh lakes, mixed woods in grass stands,

When this age is a long smear
In an ore-crammed seam of rocks,

Who will want to mine the ore
Or read out thoughts from the rocks?