The Great Not Me

 

They go to the beach

beyond the big trees.
A salt marsh where the ocean
tumbles around them.
They walk through
their unfamiliarity and differences,
taking a hundred photographs.
Strange to walk
through sand in the cold,
passing remnants of broken brick walls,
shrines made of plastic, steel rods and flags.
The sea birds wired together swirl overhead
and damp down like
a foamy cotton bedspread on the shallow water.
They look for deer but don't find any.

So much history here

but the story isn't pieced together
and narrated for them.
They can just see the outer edge fragments
that penetrate into their own time.
The animals go about their business,
surviving the winter as the companions
walk through the sand with their imperfect shoes.

Their origins are not known to them.
 They don't own their own histories,
 have no claim to them.