My weathered family walks the eroding beaches under cream and pewter
sky that’s seen vacations faded and dull with blight,
the wind pulls out what’s layered beneath, the great revealer
of these visions unclear in the indifferent light:
I saw the Roanoke colony and its con of gift shop history,
clear messages in trees hidden for tourist dimes,
my siblings around me lost to time, distance, and memory,
with money and misdirects we navigate this decaying rind.
I considered the buried bones of houses eaten by salt water,
the tide take and give, abandoned to proverbial guilt,
our blurred parents ahead sinking further from us walkers
who wonder is our structure still sound in what we’ve built?
I dug up the question of making progress and what could it finally mean
that cream overcomes pewter, power seeding to the surface of the day
to stand where we are together as the ground is eroding
is to stand in a place where we must rethink not purpose but way,
and when vacation time’s done, the wind blows us apart,
maybe one day it will a clearer vision impart.
