And the Era of Archaeologists Will Soon Be Over

How many bodies are left,
Do you think? How many bones?
You’re all questions, once alone,

Full of answers in a crowd.
Good thing you aren’t in crowds much
Anymore. You can mutter

To yourself, old and alone.
How many bodies are left,
How many bones? Of all those

Billions of people who’ve lived,
Most corpses rotted or burned,
How many are in the ground,

In a tomb, in a lake bed,
Undiscovered, unlooked for,
Yet, not altogether gone?

The Earth must be pocked with them.
Aside from cemeteries,
Many of which are massive,

There must still be so many
Millions of unhouseled bits
Of skeletal revenants,

Just lying around out there,
Partway mineralized chunks
Of ordinary matter,

Mixed in with dirt, roots, and stones.
Most of them will never be
Disinterred, no matter how

Interesting the lives they led.
Even rare as fossils are,
Fossil hunters are rarer.