Archaeology

The excavation continues, this hill,

this lump of dirt and dust telling

a story. The workmen spaded

carefully; an unthinking jab

a potential act of destruction, as

they descended through years and

decades, centuries, millennia separated

by seconds on the clock, often. They

dug and shoveled, sifted and strained,

to reach the beginning, the first cause,

a mere sixty years before.

Photograph by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.