Landfill

It’s a matter of irrigation, they tell me,
that’s got the park all sawed up.

Trenches cut across the paths, the grass,
like massive crisscrossed stitches.

And in the trenches, seashells, white, while
we’re a good mile in here.

They filled this area long ago, our relatives
and non-relatives, the ones whose bones

are buried in the many cemeteries in and about town,
with mud from under water.

Oyster shells, clams, scallops, just a little dirty
that’s all; turning up toward me on my morning walk.

And they’ve been waiting throughout the years,
once full of eyeless, sexless things through

what series of human crises and
catastrophes, what wars, what hunger,

just to be unearthed
and turned over, under the sky for the first time.