One with the Hills

Ok, commingled—
Nothing’s really one.
Another body

Burned into the air
Or placed in the earth—
Compost, fast or slow—

How many remain
Recognizable,
Fossilized, all told?

If you could dig up
All the Earth at once,
Down to ocean floors,

What a museum,
You and that army
Time carved from hard lives,

The taphonomist’s
Final Judgment Day.
It’s too much, too much.

The Earth is too slow
To digest itself.
Some of your remnants

Will never mix well,
Will have to weather
From these hills as bones,

As petrified bones,
Too many millions
Of years old, to go.

Ok? No, really,
Some of your own, some
Of those bones you know.