LOOKING UP & DOWN
Charles 'Trick' Currelly was the founder & first Curator of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archeology

Repeating task
somehow set long ago, imperious
beyond question, ignorance
fiddling in any way, & representing itself today
as my room
obstructed with the towering boxes of Kellogg's
& Pampers surrounded by the varicolored foothills
of green garbage & plastic shopping bags. Months ago
were inches of year old editions of the Globe & Mail, &
strewn helter skelter, then & now, everywhere
books, young & old, soft skin & hard, small & large.
My room. My represented existence.

                                          This week, today
I'm excavating through the granite layers
hoping for the trick
that will open the day, date, & envelop of my arrival
& release the trapped, discarded artifacts that will tell.
An old lover's broach, thankyou from a reading promoter
sheet music, cancelled tickets, crumpled photograph
necklace of ostrich eggshell & volcanic glass
never-to-be-finished poems. . . .

Archeology is said to be based upon the garbage dump
the habit of man up through time
& that of near-man before him
to pile garbage high around & even in
the places where he lives. Bone, flint
shards of broken pots, teeth
worked pieces of things once useful. . . .

I am man. And I am near-man. And I'm
what looks down after.
Behold him, 'Trick' Currelly, as he
stoops to sift for truth
the unverifiable truth.

Poetry of themusic

Looking Down

when i look up to watch the clouds
i see the silver lining
i see the trees and pretty birds
dance spirals as they're flying

i see the sun spread like a brush
the purple sky he's painting
i feel so small caught in it all
this view is so elating;

when i look down to watch the ants
i see how hard they're trying
they gave their minds to forming lines
they've helped me out, i'm finding
i want to thank the little guys
but they think i am a monster
the one climbed up, spat in my eye
she said i killed her father;
she said i killed her father.

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