We Find Them In Hillocks Poem by Linda Hepner

We Find Them in Hillocks

We find them in hillocks, valleys, sides of cliffs.
Bones, urns and earrings, knives and walls of stone,
Buried not by enemies, but time,
Conserved by nature, not destroyed by lime
Like Teuton thugs eliminating men
And women and their babies from the world
So that we'd not discover how they died
Or if they lived at all. Their silence lied
And ash revealed the where but not the when.

In tels and hummocks, graves and sandy seas
We find the precious bones and recreate
The life they lived, the way they worked, their play,
Their songs, their legends, prayers, as day by day
They thought their reign would last, their kings would rise;
Their castles, feasts and laughter echoed myths
That heroes rose to heavens, joined the old
Gods they revered with wine and robes and gold;
Assembled bones we cannot make arise.

I look into my mind but faces fade
Like mists or fleeting clouds or restless waves
Although it's only yesterday they smiled,
Although it's only last year that the child
Came living to this world and bloomed and spoke
With rosy lips and appetites and songs,
And parents told us stories of their past;
I still believe the present will outlast
Tomorrow, like those fossilled ancient folk.