The Homeless Anchor

by Jeffrey Wright

… shipwreck of conscience …
—John Adams

Awoken by geese, we walk a rocky beach,
dotted with seaweed clumps and humps
of shaggy boulders. Kelp. Bladderwrack.

Worthless treasures give themselves up.
Bits of porcelain with Victorian patterns.
Old bottle bottoms tumbled into sea-glass.

You find a signed piece of earthenware.
Touch of a hand long since gone on.
Scraps from the past left behind, lost in
a struggle between ocean and land’s end.

One day. we too will be like driftwood
attendant only to the gravity of the moon.

Carbon footprints tread on the future.
Our love, a barnacle attached to a fever.