Memo to Future Refugia

You likely won’t think of yourselves as such.
What in our day we’ve termed refugia

Were just homes to all the lives lived in them,
Worlds, states of affairs that seemed durable,

If not eternal, each temporary
Refuge as much a given as later,

Holocene climates themselves seemed ancient
Nature, cycling through forever seasons

Past our own ancestors. Nature. The world
As your parents, you, your children find it.

To think of the Ice Age refugia
Now is to think of a lost bridge from loss

To gains, from contraction to expansion.
It’s a pulse, like any other. We formed

On our beat. You’ll reform on yours. But, if
You find us and give us any meaning,

Let it be this: the world was once larger;
One day the world will be larger again.