Where drips from the stable roof the January rain,
human history is mined from the cultivated earth,
clues to the generations born and died:
a maple spile, a rusted trowel, a coin
so dark and worn the face is the head of a ghost,
the iron wheel of a toy, a rifle shell,
the brass filled with soil and ten thousand
living things if we could see closely enough,
all signs we were here, as lasting as any,
and if our past is nothing fantastic at least
we can say that we stayed, made mistakes, but we tried.
