TODD BOLl
The March of Extinctions
Countless dead stars whose light is still arriving,
the lakes of Mars, volcanoes on the moon,
the stubborn trilobites, good at surviving,
brief birds appearing late, departing soon;
the temple cult, the
pax
of Caesar's Rome,
the recipe for Stradivari's glue,
the wilderness where strangers were at home,
the liberty that freed us from the few;
clean snow in winter, leaders undisgraced,
hope for attainment in a real career,
work, love, or friendship unconstrained by haste,
old Lowell hymning Agassiz so dear;
my sister's voice, the thought of my first wife,
and by now maybe two-thirds of my life.
The Veneration of Relics
The snake of brass, the ark of shittim wood,
the lance, the cross, the veil, St. Andrew's head,
the shroud adored as though its claim were good,
remains that rouse affection for the dead;
the thousand beds where Washington once slept,
the page whose signers pledged they'd hang together,
spent musket balls our great-grandparents kept
to tie their times to ours with sacred tether;
not vague, equivocating signs but
things
that tell the truth their keepers knew they meant,
each one a testimony that still brings
the past to life and goes where it once went -
not those old letters that I threw away,
that never said what I'd have had them say.
