The Dump

“Where is the summary?”

He asked the fly.

“What marks humanity

as time goes by?”

Then he followed it out,

to the fringe of the Earth.

He followed it down,

and they stopped in the dirt.

Gazing across a wasted expanse,

farther than eyes couldn’t see,

through his hands, under his feet, the past

slithered silently.

It was a lake of fire and brimstone,

the marsh ending the River Styx,

a skeleton, though not of bone,

all of the dead to murder the quick.

An endless morgue of things forgotten,

passing people on the side of the road,

holding spoiled eggs, and ideas gone rotten.

Just waiting for time to fold.

“I see nothing.”

With unglazed eyes it turned to him,

asking, “What’d you expect to find?

For all of humanity’s only,

only what’s left behind.