Detritus

I piece together unrelated parts of different fallen objects which I find upon the ground

Things from far above land all around me in the total darkness in which I abide

And I cannot sense the gentle rain falling on that calm surface miles above

My experiences compress each other into a mental sedimentary record

I grope for the importance of things which I stumble upon but cannot see

I filter a rich gruel of detritus well-mixed during its long descent to me

I can never escape the constant threat of heavy objects crashing down like meteors

I make a comfortable home inside large carcasses for years at a time

Prevailing winds deposit a rich sample of their contents upon my leeward side

I am washed into an eddy I circle as my thoughts are sorted into their proper levels

Our randomly-incessant noisemaking smears my musings from all directions

I wash up on the clean wet sand with the waves of yet another incoming tide

Briefly streaking through the atmosphere, I drift with a few starry molecules

I fall to earth with the thunder’s ozone in the soft shower beneath a rainbow

We descend at different speeds each wondering at the others whizzing by

We are adrift in a graceful Brownian Motion far removed from our own control

Falling at one of a thousand angles with a million silent snowflakes

Drying out where the storm deposited me far above the peaceful water line

Found where dark flood waters left me laying quietly in an impossible position

Dried to fine dust after a short journey across unquenchable desert sands

I am pocked like the moon with repeated random impacts by unidentified objects

Turned over as I lay with alluvial soil to receive the good seed of the farmer

Sticking with the wax that drips from their faithful candles flickering in dank chapels

Listening as unknown liquids trickle down to me in the depths of our great landfills

Fluttering with falling leaves so that I can be buried by them year after peaceful year

Compressed into a single blue layer deep within the vastness of an ice sheet

Dated absolutely by position in the growth rings of an ancient bristlecone pine

Orbiting based on my density in a planet’s ring after an interstellar collision

Tumbled to odd resting places with the giant boulders left by those retreating glaciers

Spreading out in graceful whorls in the jet contrails headed to vacation destinations

Diluted in pure air after escaping, only partially combusted, with your exhaust

Settling out peacefully in quiet sewage lagoons along with your contributions

Sorting into the dust that came before me even as new dust softly entombs me

Exposed once more after millennia to be covered again for another billion years

Gracefully piling up in that small hourglass that drains but once, for all of us