Three in a group then one coming from a distance
to make four dividing into two scavenging pairs.

They waddle like ducks, dibble like robins.
This close to the earth they have nothing to say.

And yet as they bobble in a hands-behind-back
colloquy of feints and nods they are the ankle boots

of an idea gone missing, their laces threaded
through eyelets but left untied, accountants

of random expenditures, connoisseurs 
of the worm’s catacombs of waste, they limp eastward,

toward the mountains, covered in contractor bag
capes, one wiry foot then the other on the ground. 

If they would stay just where they are, all morning, 
they’d be the monument to the history they’re looking for.