Strata

Strata

By descendancy,
the actual becomes memory,
memory turns to story
told on a grassy roof,
until, by accident, reaching down,
someone uncovers a tesserae,
a room, a villa, a town
whose inhabitants in their turn
unearthed a flute of hollowed bone,
a shard of fired clay;
as if, sometime, we might,
in an uncovered stone, trace the print,
still faintly feathered,
of Mercury's worn sandal,
or, in a lump of laurel wood,
Daphne's upraised hand.