Looking through the microscope
at ancient cells of blood
resurrected briefly –
shooting across my line of vision
like crystalline stars
in the black void of the enigmatic past.
Constellations of antiquity
tantalizing the present watcher
who looks for tentative soundings
from the abyss of time
but is answered only with
sanguine silence.
Who were you and what were
the thoughts that came with the
final ending?
And then, froze in the residues
of ten thousand years ago.
But never mind –
there are no whispers or cries in
this window to the past.
Only the silence of a brief
and finite return.

ARW
1987