The Roving Archaeologist
(ζητείτε και ευρήσετε!*).
In Ashkelon, he excavated Roman bathhouses,
brothels, fountains, theatres, erotic vases,
palm-size ceramic oil-lamps enacting love.
The corn god journeys from hades to earth,
unveiled with pride on a mural in San Bartolo.
He fingered those muscled thighs, mythic and Maya.
Driving into the dry Kalahari, he wrestled
found symbols and syntax of rock art,
its veil solid, between men and their gods.
Resplendent, gold earrings glittered
from tombs of ancient Nimrud-on-Tigris
as he moved aside bizarre, live shells.
Then, in damnable dust, alone
he scurried for cover
from hospitable hostility -
gunships spraying hot gravel.
Navigating the Nile to its delta nip,
he recalled his companion's hand,
warmed in Egyptian sun, smooth to his touch,
and they both watched the sunset-bank dim
where Osiris, in gloom, doused his wheel of fire.
He can smell her, even now,
clean, like fresh rain ... on desert sands
where, nearby, lay Saqqara, City of the Dead
and he, leaping in the dark necropolis:
“I remember you,” he had murmured.
“Perhaps you do,” she had said,
and he felt her throat thrill to his lips
strumming his attuned body
before he grasped
these were her very words…
uttered in the night air five millenia
back to the first, the Step Pyramid
rising in tiers.
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* Seek and ye shall find.
Honorable mention
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