Becoming an Archeologist

As a child, you wanted to be an archeologist,
Heinrich Schliemann,
a name most children could not pronounce,
was your hero,
the discoverer of Troy,
who made the Iliad live
unearthing stones and bones.

As a middle aged man,
you preferred the burying of history,
pain pushed below the surface,
deep below,
in a vain attempt to become safe
from the monsters of your own odyssey.

It never works of course.
Monsters will always out.
There are not enough stones or closets to hold them.
and now, with gray hair and wrinkled eyes
you have become a child again,
an archeologist of your own soul.
History has burrowed deep
and you dig deeper still,
more interested in the remains that live
than the dead things
that once populated your nights.