Poem by Amy Lemmon 

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THE ART HISTORIAN'S TALK REMINDS ME OF CHILDHOOD

Serpent Mound, Ohio,
is the template for my own
emotional earthworks. 
No one knows who made it
or how long it took, though Experts
in Pre-Columbian studies sift images, 
glue theories. Situationist scholars
say it doesn't matter. They don't wait
for the light-bulb burst,
the old camera flash to distill
the tinder of data into spark. 

Adjoining farms bridge
the Mound to Shopping Center Land.
State routes snake through the country
as they did long before Eisenhower. 

We climbed the stairs
to look down on it whole:
a snake eating an egg
or the head of another creature,
my father's schooling
in geology never bringing him
closer to the ancient earth,
its dubious evolution.

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