Best Documentary 2013

The King in the Car Park, U.K. tv documentary. Humorous host Simon Farnaby joins Ricardian (Richard III society member) Philippa Langley on her quest to find/dig up long-lost body of Richard III in Leicester. Langley has a hunch about an “R” on parking lot surface and the first place the project crew digs turns up the missing king. As quest goals go, a million-to-one hunch based on intuition which yields total success. Documentary traces the dig process, the DNA match with Richard’s ancestor today–a Canadian, the bones analysis indicating details of king’s murder and humiliation, and an amazing facial reconstruction/match with the traditional portrait. Below my poem from last summer written after one/first viewing of documentary:

A Buried Life

O brave new world,
what fools these mortals be!
They found me under a car park
several feet down–Richard.
A gentle woman’s touch
released me from my private peace.
A slow, loving process
I had never known before.

Conniving and entitlements,
I once wanted it all.
Little did they who found me
know I wanted to be left
alone where I could not be hurt
again, to suffer more indignities.

And so they boxed and dated me,
then stood around my bones
in dark sterile rooms
wondering who I really was.
It was just a matter of more time
till technology and speculation
would have their way with me,
my puzzle bones and their agendas.

They rejoiced to restore me
(or so they thought),
missing every inner bit that mattered
of feeling, dream and passion.
A life, a man, being so much more
than identity and mere evidence
that I was once was and still am here.

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