The Lost Colony

They never learned to tell one bird from another, a shrub from a weedy sapling, or when the season had forced a flower’s bloom, not even if a berry had ripened into poison. And yet they drew endless distinctions between colors and polish and coarseness of weave, and would not let their daughters marry out. They didn’t keep their children, though they gave them tests and fed them. They were known for meticulous records, for trophies and peeling stars. They burned things up or wore them down, had ranks and staff and lecterns, machines that moved them from place to place, bright jewels and playing cards. They were old when they could have been young, and young when they could have been old. They left a strange word in a tree: croatoan, and a track in the dust of Mars.