Emperors of Dust

Halcyon days cluster like secretaries
tongued with reminders:
"Step on this scarce spring grass
and think of yourself beneath it:
one day, buried."
 
In shallow water, a man lies back on his paddle board
and a turtle pricks the lake surface
and someone shouts gleefully under a sky-
the same sky that watched his grandfather crumple under gunfire,
his grandfather's great aunt die in her sleep,
their ancient parents rise and marry and build an empire that matured to ruins.
 
We are all emperors of dust.
Landscapers of circuitous paths.
Thinkers of recycled thoughts.
 
Add your footsteps to the trodden roads,
your liquid soul to time's human sea.
And to the pantheon
of written words, add your words.
You see what your ancestors did.
 
"He who has seen the present age has seen all, both all that has taken place from eternity, and all that will be through time without end." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VI:37