Poem O' The Day

We Owe the Dead

this much at least, to wonder
what to call them. From Eve
to just this evening, more than
100 billion—give or take
some millions, depending on when

we start to imagine,
shriek of Australopithecine,
murmur of Homo sapiens.
The din swells with the O, O
of each act of generation,

decibels of mortality, furtive
or brazen. Some signed in,
but most left no way to say
them. Crawling from oceans,
lungs filling with the bloody froth

of moments, they lived only
to be swept into the brine
of dissolution, their unspoken monument
the brittle script of bones.
Who becomes our tribal duty.

Listen. Singing from that oak,
from cave, river rock, fallow field,
spume of sea, the wild wind's guttural.
Every storm and dream roars out
the dear names of the lost.

--David Citino