Earth, Day 1

Fragments of everything

Are cast upon this beach

Three calm days

After two summer storms

Electrified and wrenched

From the guts of the sea

Stones, shells, fossils, stones,

Small and ancient living things.

It’s all there.

We who took cover

From the threat of storms

And stood

Behind glass

Did not fathom

The depth and degree of violence

That turned the Atlantic inside out.

Now:

Here is the detritus

Of Earth, Day 1,

And every other day of our beginnings.  

What do we make of all of this--

What we see and can name,

What we see and cannot name?

We peer into the creased, coarse sheets

Of our story strewn across this beach,

And even kneel down,

The better to see it all.

Perhaps we will find a shark’s tooth.

Or something.