The Lost Colony
They never learned to tell
one bird from another, a shrub
from a weedy sapling,
or when the season had
forced a flower’s bloom, not
even if a berry
had ripened into poison.
And yet they drew endless
distinctions between
colors and polish and
coarseness of weave,
and would not let
their daughters
marry out.
They didn’t keep
their children, though they
gave them tests and fed
them. They were known
for meticulous records, for
trophies and peeling stars.
They burned things up
or wore them down, had ranks
and staff and lecterns,
machines that moved them
from place to place, bright
jewels and playing cards.
They were old when they could
have been young, and young
when they could have been old.
They left a strange word
in a tree: croatoan,
and a track in the dust of Mars.
Copyright Credit: Susan Stewart, "The Lost Colony" from Red Rover. Copyright © 2008 by Susan Stewart. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: Red Rover (University of Chicago Press, 2008)