the dead
can still reach
out and speak to us,
why
on Earth
can't our precursors?
Where
are all the hasty, slipshod
mock-ups
and the models—
all the dinged prototypes
of our parents
and kids
that never got
the chance to exist?
Perhaps this
isn't fiction;
perhaps
this unlucky legion
does whisper
in the mumbling
of motors, or the swish
of tall grasses,
but the words
that they utter there
are just so
outlandish
in their aberrant
combinations
of ghastly and ecstatic
that our ears
can't bear to register
the significance
of their air pressure—
so we walk on
from the spot, chagrined
and convinced
that we must
just be the
only ones
withdrawn enough
to wonder this.
