We’ve got six rigs
flung in a haphazard parking
pattern marking headquarters.
One guy’s loading lath
and a woman needs flagging tape
and the others, they just want maps.
Oskar is reading a fat book
on the history of archaeological thought
or forensic archaeology
or Che Guevara
in the front seat of his Pathfinder
but the rest are more like,
well, older. I flick a butt
in his direction.
Don’t you know where you are?
I ask.
He looks around at the horizon of trailers.
He looks down at the smoking
cigarette butt
and over at two people tiptoeing
between dog shit to reach the lath
and he says,
smiling gently,
no.
orphan poems 