Tiny gasps of wonder

The great Hypogeum -- a Paleolithic
temple and oracle at Hal Safieni on
Malta -- had, for a long part of its
history, a burial vault, with more
than 7,000 human skeletons
interred beneath its packed red dirt.

What puzzled the archaeologists
was the absence of larger bones,
a lacuna repeated at other megalithic
digs around the Mediterranean.

They've concluded that the
the bodies of the select were buried
elsewhere while they decomposed
and then the choicest bones were
harvested for replanting
in the vaults reserved for God.

Brother, I wander here at your
memorial today -- dark and late
as usual, breezes strumming the
fine tendrils of the garden's stalks --
and wonder if the heart's grief
descends that sacred way,
drossing off the wastes of history
til only the finest memories remain
to root in the the finest black loam.

We all love that photo of you
standing at the Lincoln Park Zoo
in Chicago at aged 5, a hand to
your gaping mouth, eyes wide with
wonder at some beast,
recognizing the whole story there,
home at last.

That picture of you is the summa
of all the photographs you'd take
pouring back the healing waters
of the womb you would not forsake
even though you feared it so.

Perhaps we are at last
but epitaphs writ on an
ancient chamber's stones
a thousand lives ago,
tiny spiral whorls of a child's pure Yes
repeated in the dark's vast No

become such flowers,
tiny gasps of eternal light.

The only picture I've found of Timm with his camera.
All the flower pix are his -- now ours.