In Tombstone
Poetry, Free verse, Written Tales Weekend Challenge Reader’s Pick
Let the historians of today’s time—
if anyone really wants to be a historian of our time—
Let them know that the zeitgeist of the age is in Tombstone.
Not the vindictive Sheriff in the OK Corral shootout in eighteen eighty-one, no,
I’m talking about the tourists of Tombstone in twenty twenty-one.
Just take one photograph of those t-shirt clad vacationers!
See how they tread all over the lumpy, backfill graves,
One has a can of diet coke in his hand while he reads the stone:
‘Here lies Lester Moore—four slugs from an A44—no less—no more.’
With his phone he takes a picture of himself,
Grinning astride the corpse of Lester Moore.
And to think somewhere in Greece,
There are ropes and tapes and securities all to protect
A single shard of ancient painted pottery:
Painted on it not a coke can tourist, but a Hercules.
Ouch!