Archaeology
Digging into the afternoon,
My hands become aware of –
It refuses to be named, but certainly,
Two sets of eyes look out at me
From a barren landscape of white.
This is no haunting; the eyes are familiar,
Like a book of questions, endless,
Rolling and turning and melting
Upon abandoned branches of sad trees,
In wilting thought-deserts, dreaming of Gaia.
My hands dig deeper, brushing away
Clay, wet and thick, and still,
Still, this nameless familiar, dodges, swerves,
Slithering in Bethlehem-bound ardour.
My desperate hands in bone-hunting fury.
Each signifying trace falls upon the heels
Of another, in lexical train.
My fingers, bloodied protuberances now,
Suture-fevered, calamity-flamed,
Falling headlong into abyssal white.
They never stopped digging.
They carved out whole burrows,
Each with its own grammar and structure
Of significations, like phoenixes rising
From the white ash of blank pages.
I left my blood in each.
These days, like another, I use my pen instead.
©Nikhil 2021
N.B — Another writing prompt from J.D. Harms (I’m trying to catch up with the ones I’ve missed, J.D. They’re piling up like so many Sisyphean mountains!). This time it was about “Empty pages” the blank page.
I went with the struggle I always have to fill the blank page, the “abyssal white.” I hope I’ve done the prompt justice.
