Go Back Poem by Doug Lane

In Pompeii
a thief
who had just found
the motherlode
was interrupted

by a pyroclastic flow
which seared him
to death
and molded him

into a curiosity
peered at
by tourists
2000 years later.

"Go ahead,
judge me if you will.
Gloat because
for a little while longer,

you will live
as I haven't
for millenia.
Gloat because

I slept through
the Fall of Rome,
the invasion
of the Goths
and the Visigoths.
I missed
the founding of the Church,
the Middle Ages,
the Renaissance,
World Wars I and II,
the execution of Mussolini,
the exile
of Lucky Luciano.

I'm a hollow shell
of my former self.

Go back
to your hotel.
Dream about
what you'll miss
in the 2,000 years

after
the next
eruption."