In You Is Lebanon

The earth has a long memory but
Awash and shifting,
Men and rivers,
The history it tells is like skin.
The deeper wounds remain
And the old colors do not fade,
But the middling things -
They are gone with the rain.
The swelling and the burn,
All returns to the place of its birth and
Yet there were cedars in Lebanon
And mastodons on the scabland.
Of these things there is a remnant or none
And little mark of their life
But fossils like scar tissue and
Histories of what once was verdant.
Thus within you is the memory of all contained,
For you and in you
The cedars will grow forever.