Palimpsest Poem by Francie Lynch

You can surely decipher the scratches
On my interior wall, just inside the pile of bones.
There are hieroglyphic reliefs on my brow;
My simian eyes are the windows to my genealogy.
I am refurbished, re-modeled, re-drawn, re-worked;
I am not born again.
Along the hollow trunk, dragged to the bone pile,
Scratches and claw marks attest to the competitions.
On the flip side of the tablet, evidence the wax impressions
Of migrant refugees landing in Hibernia.
Nuclear scan my revealing contours
Of imperishable, ingrained, indelible markings
To unearth former loves,
Parsed and re-read in the morning light,
Not unlike outlines of Mesolithic settlements.
The male landscape is as seismic as the plates beneath the seas,
Where no winds sculpt, no suns scorch, no moons shade:
Only the timeless, steady, relentless currents.