sand disturbed an ocean away
on a beach I shall never revisit
but the beach remembers my daughter's play
although we cannot relive it.

three coral fragments, two pink, one red
lost and found in a driftwood forest
but the sea remembers the day we left 
with salt on our skin and our whole lives before us.

because I walked once there, the sand stream has shifted
if I’d never lived, that sand would be different.
because I once stood there, the wind’s waves were parted
if I’d never been, the air would’ve drifted.
because I once smiled, laughed, joy blossomed within him
if I were not born, would you’ve smiled there instead?

we think of legacy, monument, history
names carved in gravestones
printed on pages
we think of the empires, rising and falling
emperors ruling
losing and lusting
we wonder if we’ll be remembered like they are
forgetting all of the emperors forgotten
the intrigue erased, the powerful vanquished
by decades or centuries, by minutes or seconds.

who is remembered by people, by places?
our atoms recycled, our atoms eternal.
who is remembered, in features, in faces?
unnatural selection, victorious and feral.

four million years since “we” walked upright
eight million years hence, will we know who rules?
what fragments of genes, yours or mine, will be trusted?
will Stonehenge remain? the pyramids? crown jewels?
certainly not that tower in Pisa
when will it fall? will the tragedy leave us?
will the Buddha be mentioned? the Christ-child Jesus? 
will the Mona Lisa hang in high honor? old Venus? Greek friezes? 
or if not: 
on what day were they archived, destroyed, or bereaved us?

the Earth will contain all our traces forever
magnesium from Plato and Genghis and Leo
carbon from Einstein, exhaled when he finished 
his theory which later will be old as Nero.

they say only god knows the hairs on my head
or the hairs in the drain, or the iron I bled
the cups, knives, and tumblers I’ll put in the landfills
(gone after centuries,
but still at risk daily
of becoming my longest material impression).

we make trash out of plastic and books out of paper
but shouldn’t it be the other way round?
what should we make all our books of? stone tablets? 
even that is unsure if the stone is unfound.
clay tablets from fewer than five thousand years off
contain the most ancient of stories not lost.

the body’s dissolved, but its influence lives on
the mind is dissolved, but its insights live on
walk the church yard entombing five thousand from wars
swim the sea, the grave of unnumbered once known
gaze at space, where few ashes soar for the stars.

I am overwhelmed by soft fingerprints on
the crust of the Earth. the heat death of the earth, 
the heat death of the universe.
but we are still here, living this way.
what of the morrow? they say
everything is now:
today.

[Featured Image: reconstruction of Ishtar gate, public domain]