what's preserved

honey and plutonium

last as long as their

containers.

salt lasts forever

when it's dry,

a streak

in the seams and layers

of vanished seas,

the stony pages

of histories laid down

before songs or books

recorded tears on cheeks,

the wordless world

of fishless ocean

and birdless sky

before cells began

to multiply.

and on and on

until god got bored

with dinosaurs

and mastodons

winked and spat

on a speck of clay

and called it man.

who put jars of honey

in pharoah's tomb,

and stashed barrels 

of plutonium deep within

the vaults of eternal salt

under the western plains

of new mexico to rot 

and radiate

for twenty-four thousand years

while the cities drown

in the rising tide

of the planet's tears.

what should we now

endow to our inheritors,

the smart machines and locusts?

sweeten them with honey

and eat them as we wander

through the great salt desert?