Insuring the Land

All this: what one could still gesture at 
with a sweep of an arm—coppery

stretches of sand flats, gel-like
pools of water asterisked by slender

birds, hems of hills ringed 
with stands of stalwart green.

Thickets of greenbriar, cedar, 
and pine; saltmarsh cordgrass 

across the estuary. We want 
to gather them in as if to hold, 

as if we could—each ruffled frond 
and call in the softer hours, 

each speckled staff of sea oxeye
and goldenrod. Insurance is the word 

we use for the fear of risk
underlining every desire,

knowing as we do 
of war's broad mantle, storm

surges that breach the reefs 
and barriers, forcing their way into every 

box of keepsakes in the basement, 
roofs that cave in from the unrelenting 

sorrows of rain. We're always paying 
to underwrite the cost of coming 

tragedies, the cost of restoration 
of these habitats: paying with coin,

with sandcastled futures of. human 
and nonhuman beings not yet even born.