Fragments Lying under Aspens

How can you make a human
Art, we can imagine you
Asking us, in disbelief,

With no plausible human
Feeling or character caught
Up anywhere within it?

You’re a broken collection
Of forgotten purposes,
You’ll mock. You’ll be right. We are.

Be an archeologist,
We’ll answer, as bravely as
A human, or as we can.

You can richly imagine
Whole peoples and their cultures,
Clothes, kin structures, ways of life,

Using patience and science
And hot-headed arguments
Over half-buried ruins.

We’re remnants, too. Take pity
On these abandoned notions,
Organic traces in shards.

Use your imagination.
We represent who used us.
We can’t not be part human.

Bare as we are, we’re haunted.
When a human, words haunt you.
Once you go, those ghosts are you.