Accidents of Preservation

Here we are, a small pattern
Of small, ordinary terms
One small human put in lines

And then copied a few times,
Using the technologies
Available at the time.

What would other humans think?
We are not a pattern
Of a kind to win a prize.

The human will not survive
Too many decades longer.
If this pattern has arrived

By some fluke at a time when
The patterns read each other,
Thousands of years from these lines,

Our value will be that fluke
Survival, no matter what
We did or didn’t manage

To say within our pattern,
To convey to the humans
Of our time or any time.