Foraging

Can’t know what you’ve really lost,
Given you’ve really lost it—
That’s your true past, the past past

That’s irrecoverable.
The rest’s the weird recent past
You might as well call present,

Weird only in that it hints,
Relentlessly, there’s more past,
Lost past you can’t find in it.

Among retreating patches
Of piñons in high country,
The scrub jays squawk and forage,

And a woodpecker hammers
At a dead trunk in shadows.
So there you go. The past, all

Present and accounted for,
Tickety-boo, but missing
Something lost forever, too.

Why not call that the future,
Just as inaccessible?
You flicker with wayside birds

In a world whose changing ways
You perceive just long enough
To know both ends are missing.