like signs of struggle in a field where nothing stirs, the past can seem everywhere

As a scar commemorates what happened, 

so is memory itself but a scar. As in: Given 

hunger, which is endless only until it isn’t, he 

destroyed what he could. And then?— 

 

So the lover enters the beloved—enters, 

and withdraws; so a yellow-crested 

night heron wades into view, then out: 

useless? It gets harder to say. Like 

signs of struggle in a field where nothing 

stirs, the past can seem everywhere. I think 

to be useless doesn’t have to mean 

not somehow mattering. Years now, and 

 

still I can’t stop collecting the strewn shells 

of spent ammunition where I come across them; 

carefully, I hold each up toward what’s left of the light. 

 

[Carl Phillips {1959- } 'The Need for Dreaming', from Double Shadow: Poems]