This Is the Best Electric Toothbrush

Relics are garbage plus time.
Just check out Çatalhöyük.

Even so, most waste is waste
Forever. Fascination

Isn’t enough to make flakes
Of chert or pottery shards

Wonderfully valuable.
Long lists of palace accounts

Will never match Gilgamesh.
Toss your receipts in the trash.

Let your broken devices
Bulk up mountainous landfills.

The value of the middens
Compressed under lakeside parks

And bike trails in Chicago—
To give just one example

Among covered-over worlds—
Isn’t that of tombs and hoards

But, scientifically,
Of careful reconstruction

Of how some people once lived
And, imaginatively,

Of the graveyard chill of ghosts,
Of revenants underfoot,

Of long lost pasts in ambush,
Like cave paintings or cave bears.