White Sands Notwithstanding

Always and never the last
Are the prophets, each vision
Announced as culmination

And completion of before,
And then another vision,
A newer culmination.

Theorists do the same thing,
To a point, admitting that
They aren’t the last word, but still,

They’ve got it figured out now—
Test them, you’ll find only proof.
But there’s never any proof,

Only heaps of evidence
Building atop good theories
Until they’re more or less crushed

And fresh theories rise from them,
Pyramids of steps, more points.
Where are we going with this?

Are we getting anywhere?
Probably not in this poem,
Which is not a prophecy,

Nor a theory, not even
A good set of images
Or eyewitness memories.

No, we’re just sitting alone
In this poem, symbols, bird tracks
In sands shifting without end.

It’s amazing how thorough,
However, erasure is,
Thanks to things never ending.