Therapeutic

The archiving of my soul
Proves a painful business
Right from the first

Peel of surface turf.
You extract artifacts
With special tools and tiny brushes,

Erasing the palimpsest
With surgery
To find the very first.

Head down,
You are busy with your work,
Regardless.

What worries me,
As I lay here exposing,
Is what there is to find

After all this digging.
What if there is no buried treasure,
Just a buried toad

Sleeping in the dark
Articulating nothing but
A slow waking swallow.