Scribble

What survives surprises—
The egg in the latrine,
The moccasin in clay,

The rags pinned to foundlings
By desperate mothers
To identify them—

All in museums now,
With notes on provenance,
Centuries past the deaths

Of everyone who used
That latrine, wore muddy moccasins,
Was abandoned at birth.

No matter how many
Fossilized ancestors
Get dug up, it remains

The case that most records
Of human existence
Are more like the tunnels

Scooped through soil by the worms,
The worms long since vanished
But their scribbles now stone.