What’s Truly Gone

You say there’s nothing left,
But there always is, if
It’s only something, if

It’s really nothing much.
It’s a strange fact, rarely
Remarked, that this cosmos

Doesn’t often erase
Very well and never
Perfectly, even though

Any given pattern
Or patch is doomed to go—
Like scraps of continents

Built billions of years since
That have skipped subduction,
Like soft-bodied fossils,

Rare, certainly, but there,
Like sturdy coprolites,
Like shadowy outlines

Of fallen walls in woods,
Homes surfacing from sand—
And not just on Earth.

The sky’s dusty with wrecks
Of stellar explosions.
Every wave gets erased

But never perfectly,
Quite. Or maybe it’s just
What’s truly gone’s unknown.