from Archaeology

17.    

One kind of salvage brings up the intact bones,
restores the shattered ceramic jar, and mounts
the glowing skull on a podium in the public square,

rescuing objects, fashioning icons to catch
the watery past and bear it to the present.
Another kind of salvage hears no birds in the field,

holds the tiny bat bone up to the gun barrel,
ponders the nature of marrow, the meaning of hollow,
wonders about the union of work and the sharing of sweat.

Not exclusive, these brands of archaeology,
just oddly at odds, a strange scale they weigh on,
each blind in the other’s good eye.

How did you make sense of it all
when the burial was first uncovered, to see
one kind of salvager leap into the pit, shouting 

for the mappers, the cameras, the press,
while the other looked to the nearby farmhouse
and thanked whatever gods for no shallow graves?