Ode to History

Campbell McGrath

At the crossroads 

I am lost 

and pull the car over and get out. 

Farms as far as the eye can see, 

fields of vegetables in brilliant sunlight.

No matter how hard I try

I will never create anything as beautiful as this

ripple of water 

cupped in a purple cabbage leaf. 

Hidden in the ditch 

is a puddle 

full of ducklings—fourteen 

or fifteen of them

surrounding their wide-eyed mother,

while yards away, 

motionless and imperturbable, stands 

the great blue heron 

that would snatch them 

in an instant.

Always the same question, 

an equation

of what is and what may be against 

what has been lost—is it 

worth the cost, 

will it be, how could it ever not be? 

Documents, maps 

imbued with ancient ink, chronicles 

and archives—the past 

is paper 

and the present, a match igniting 

what fires will come.