the robot

I find myself writing more short stories these days than actual poems - my apologies if this is out of place here, hope you enjoy. ------------------------------------------ 15-05-2004 "the robot" It was as if the hot dry wind had blown those days away, blown them far beyond the horizon, ripped them clean from our hands and thrown them out of sight, and had now found its way through the smallest of metal joints. Howling with malice, determined to blow the memories away too. Cleanse the time from every last corner. Just a small portion of the robot was visible through the thick sand. A head, a torso and, if you looked closely, the tips of four fingers which protruded through the sand in front of it. A hand held out in front of it. A hand held out as if to stop the oncoming. A hand held out in a gesture that was undeniably human. Perhaps the very dust that beat at its face now, sand-blasted its face, was the dust of those people long gone. Those people that used to swarm the street where it had ceased, so very long ago. A million lives breathing a soft "thank you" onto its hard metal cheeks, the tinkling tinsel sound of sand on steel. Yet with each small silica kiss, the sand was winning. But none of that mattered now. Now the sand swarmed along the desert, day in and out, hell-bent on getting nowhere first and covering over anything it its path. Perhaps those long ago had done the same. Perhaps the robot knew, but ages had passed and the ability to reactivate it was gone. That small scab of knowledge lost with a million others now tearing and bouncing along the desert. We would never have it again. Perhaps it knew why we had destroyed ourselves. Were you to dig, in the unlikely event the relentless wind let you. Dig with small horsehair brushes gently into the sand, like the archaeologists of old, you would uncover the sad reality buried in the sand. Crouching behind the robot is a skeleton, the skeleton of a small human child. Head resting on its knees, tiny hands clenched up into balls on its chest. Preserved beautifully brittle beneath its sandy grave. That sad reality would shout, scream, scream like a banshee above the howling wind. Echo across the desert. Scream that the last act of humanity was performed by a machine. A machine made by us in our own image, and taught by us to do the one thing that we forgot: Protect.