Knowledge Poem by David Harris

What happens to our knowledge
when we pass from here?
Will it be buried with us
for an eternity to be undisturbed,
or do we leave tracks
of our knowledge behind?

Great minds have already written down
things they did not want to forget.
Is it possible that great knowledge
is gathering dust somewhere
in those forgotten chapters
of our history?

Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings
of airplanes and submarines.
Were they just fanciful dreams,
or were they reality?
Could these things have existed,
but of their presence in history
this knowledge for them departed?

What about Atlantis
with its knowledge unbound.
Did it really disappear
beneath the waves without a sound,
and the knowledge that they held,
did that all vanish with them?

We can only speculate
where all this knowledge goes
as new minds dream of things
that may have existed in the past.
Which leaves us with the question,
what happens to our knowledge
when we pass away from here?

4 September 2008