Ruins, Whiskeys, Cookies, and Germs

When you apply a small percentage to a very large number, you get a substantial number.

That there are any fossils at all

Hints at something fairly frightening—

How many deaths per tooth did it take?

That’s there’s any literature left

From the Bronze Age suggests there were hacks

Composing myths and philosophy

All over, from the Yellow River

To the far Mediterranean,

At a minimum. Well we’re at it,

What is leftover literature

From lost, ancient civilizations

With utterly weird belief systems

More like, anyway? Ruins—given

They were once quite lofty, pretentious,

Vainglorious, actually lifeless,

And progressively crumbled with time?

Whiskeys—in that they just got better,

More potent, seemed more and more complex

Until, at some mysterious point

Of inflection, they soured into muds?

Or were poems and tales more like batches

Of pastries, like plates of cookies, best

Fresh out of the oven, like this one?

Germs. There’s your metaphor. Bacilli

Dehydrated, frozen, dark, undead,

Most of them harmless in windblown dusts,

But a few sprung to life in your lungs.