Is There A Way? Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

Is there a way
to write a poem
so that it captures
the passing
in the eternal?

You know,
the way 8,000 year old skeletons
make you think
of Amerindians roaming around
the Northwest
before the rest of us
ruined it?

Or the way
the pyramids,
or what's left of them,
speak to us
of the Egyptians,
...slaves?
laboring in the burning Saharan sun
to drag those gigantic blocks of stone
up top.
Did they have disability insurance,
a minimum wage,
and Social Security?
Or did their overseers
whip them to death
or behead them
when they fell down
in their traces?

And the Parthenon
always makes me think
how the Turks
used it as a munitions dump
several centuries ago
and of course the ammo
blew off the roof,
poof!
now you see it,
now you don't.
It's magic!

And what remains
makes us imagine
those genius Greeks,
2500 years ago,
philosophizing, dramatizing,
fighting off Persians and Spartans,
succumbing to plagues
and demagogues....
....just like us.

Well, sort of.
The thing to remember is,
the Greeks did not forget
to build a roof
for the Parthenon.
The Turks came along later
and stupidly blew it off.
And our houses and public buildings
start out with roofs, too.
Some of them domes.
But we're threatening
to blow the roofs
off our rotundas
already,
with the help
of our own
personal
Turks.