Years later you emerge to say– oh,
you were marginalia in the stampede
of time. Fine. Where

are the footprints? Developing
the rock we once said was us.
That’s the Earth. I’m garbage.

The erosion of memory
started with aluminum beneath
your feet. The sand–

such an ordeal
to remember the origin
of recyclables. I am a

weather system forming
my own thoughts about
the worth of a tornado,

how it whips the air
in circles to salt
the crust of distance.

(originally published in Plato’s Caves, Summer 2020)