Archaeology

Under the pilot light,
under the stove,
under the linoleum,
there is something
that’s been there a while.

I don’t know what it is.
I’ve never seen it or smelled it.
I couldn’t describe it to you.
But it’s there, something dropped
by someone who lived here before me.

It’s an old house, built
in 1900, and maybe the thing
under the pilot, stove, etc.
is something that old too:
a coin, an earring, a scrap
of paper with half a letter
or word missing and no chance
of figuring out what it might have said.

I know it’s there,
sopping with grease and meaning,
kept warm by that small flame.

It has to be there. There’s no way
I can live here without having something
of those who also lived here
remain in my space
that was there space.  It’s luck
or curse or just remnant, relic
trash.  Nothing disappears
and nothing stops affecting me,
ever. 

One of these days I might fix the floor
and you bet I’ll dig it out and hold it
in my hand.  I’ll put it back before I’m done,
and I won’t bother adding something of my own —

better my own addition
be accidental as well, the perfect piece
of my life left behind for the next tenant
to puzzle on late at night;

though he or she
might never understand
what that feeling means,
it’ll be good to be alive
and present here
for a long, long time.