Poem: "Haunts of History"
This poem was inspired by a prompt from aldersprig and sponsored by fireun. The idea of haunting a place that doesn't exist anymore got me thinking about prehistoric houses made from mammoth bones.
Haunts of History
They are still there,
vague as fog on cold mornings,
stirring and stirring the ancient air.
They are something less than memory,
more than ghosts -- impressions left in bone,
in earth, in jumbled artifacts like a tumble of lost treasure.
This was a home once,
built from mammoth bones and hides,
housing the laughter of families and the press of warm flesh.
The ghost of its past
is still visible in its presence,
white scaffolding shining in the mind's eye.
These were people, once,
and great shaggy beasts huge as houses,
their passage looming large over the dusty steppes.
The echos of these ancestors
linger in the teasing, ceaseless wind
and whisper hunches into the heat of living ears.
The archaeologists shiver
even in the bright noon sunlight,
stumble at a subtle shove but do not know why.
The spirits swirl,
purposeless yet eternal,
bubbles in an eddy of Time's infinite river.