This is a place where time is thin — you feel it
approaching in the car down Aulac Road.
Grey skies hover over the sullen landscape
magnetic with sorrow and dread.
Here the shattering began, the separation,
scattering across the wide Atlantic.
From the hilltop, below the power lines, you see
green fields sloping toward Tantramar Marsh,
oppressive silence hovering in the air,
tightening your chest, and your head swims
with memories your own yet not your own —
pain, loss, sensation of sheer terror
at what is to come and what soon will pass,
all things that happened centuries ago.
Now, you pace the battlements, examine old stone
for some visible trace of disquiet,
uncertain if stone can speak, or if the sea
floods your mind with the incoming tide.