The Forest Along the Shore

He sits on the shore, thinking
How what makes the past long past
In a person’s memory

Isn’t only that it’s past
And irrecoverable,
But that, unlike what happens,

The most recent past of now,
The long past can’t be detached
In thought from its true futures,

From everything happened next,
All the memories come since,
Making living connections

Like these overgrown tangles
Of the roots of this present
Forest gripping the shoreline,

Threaded with mycelium,
Ants, shore spiders, the rusted
Rebar of the long-gone pier.

It will go. Could burn, could drown,
Could be cut down, but it can’t
Be disentangled, your past.