Ankhs are a mystery.
From pharaohs’’ ancient time, fashioned with a line
that goes across the top and loops like a lariat twine—
how lovely it is.

Ankhs are a mystery.
In clay they’re set like runes; were they used in tunes
ff hieroglyphs? in sand that shifts in burning desert ru’ns.
How hot it still is.

Egyptologists have seen them,
but still they cannot understand them.
What’s meant is absent, so they land in
what is just one big conundrum.

So Ankhs are a mystery.
Of sunburned ancient lore from the days of yore:
that sun will make your headache as beneath it you explore.
But Ankhs, they mean what?

Ankhs are a mystery.
Were they once used in verse? And things could be worse:
they could be malbeseechings in an evil mummy’s curse.
Unlucky, if that.

Ankhs are a mystery.
Of many there’s a trace in this desert place.
Linguists are stumped ’cause they’ve been trumped. . .hieroglyphics have case?
How it’s bugging them.

They wonder: might they be hie[ratic] calls
to just the august of their peoples,
in pyramids pointed like steeples.
It’s clear as must, beneath the dust.

So, Ankhs are a mystery.
The tombs say, “Entrez-vous” to the science crew
but say, “Tut-tut!” to plunderers who artifacts accrue.
Two plump plunderers, Hosni, Morsi, got an “Adieu,
And Ankh you so much!”