The Scroll

why do we persist

in preserving what wants

only to be gone

caretakers

of disappearing

objects find

the scroll

difficult to unroll

the trustees

of antiquities

do not do

it justice

nobody cares

its painted symbols

have meanings

discarded long ago

on the sides

of cobbled roads now

buried deep beneath the earth

images inked

on vellum are

of fantastical beasts

no one recalls

of ordinary creatures

transformed

into something

more or less evolved

its artifice of parchment

crumbles at the

glued seams of brittle sheets

the verso frays as

scholarship unwinds

into pompous stuff

that makes no sense

the umbilicus splinters

the recto whispers sounds

not even the best of us

might guess

nevertheless

the night shift

keeps the thick glass

of the display case wiped

the inlaid mahogany

of the solid frame polished

nicely maintained

after each touch

the faintest

fragrance from

a forgotten temple

floats in the air

and in the sterile chamber

in the dim curated light

the scroll holds in silence

a mystery all its own

an artifact’s yearning to depart

its jail of glass and fancy wood

to be on its way again

to the dust of all that’s past