What if we could find a way to sift
the winds for drifting minds to place in bodies
again? Whom would we coose and why? The Saviors
and philosophers kings to stop our squabbling? the poor
who choked in obscurity and filth? the nameless
heroes who sacrificed themselves? the murdered,
the stifled, the unfulfilled? the evil to repair
their shame? the children who barely had a chance?
Who, among all the unredeemed
billions swirling like leaves to be reborn
wouldn't have some claim for living more?
Isn't it better the dead come back as they do,
briefly, when they surface in a stranger's face
or voice or in a scrap of song, or steadily,
when light shafts through a window in an empty room
and the motes of dust almost coalesce,
or suddenly, when memories storm our solitude
in vacant lots or crowds, clouding us
in pain or refreshing us in a rinse of remembrance
leaving everything shining, veneered with past,
and perhaps valued more because it does not last
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