Lurkers

The words are what’s left,
The numbers and names.
We read you. We read
Ourselves in you. We
Recognize ourselves.

There are pictures, too.
Some we recognize.
Some we never will.
Still, we give them names,
Stories and numbers.

We give them ourselves,
Whatever they were
To the cave painters,
To the rock scrapers,
To the shell piercers.

Something, not quite life,
Comes alive in us,
Ourselves to ourselves,
The inscrutable
Pictures, the scratches

On bone, the wedges
In clay, papyrus
Bundles in middens.
We wait for more talk,
For more storytellers.