To a Young Poet of the Far Future

I see you dragging a stick
across the skin of a new
desert, back and forth,
as though you stirred the pot
in which you’ll cook your next
meal, should it appear.

You’ve no idea yet
that out of this cauldron of lulls
a proto-lyric will rise
and patter across your days,
the footsteps of a god
approaching or receding.

Perhaps you have some culture
already, though nothing of mine
survives. You know perhaps
the runes of your elders. Good.
What you do not know
is that you’ve already beaten

time at its own game—
the sign you brush in the sand
could seed the kind of line
whose beat is made to last,
and the seconds will be helpless
to play along. I ask

only that you look back
from time to time, and dream
of ancestors unknown,
as though you beheld a hidden
mirror—hidden in
the glass that dunes the ground.