The Past

Tonight the past
is an odd stimulant.
I cannot sleep
and it's not for the coffee
or the unaccustomed wine
but the girl's necklace
that lies a stone's throw from here
beyond the gnarled apple trees
and the mini roundabouts.
Its mix of milk-veined blue
and wooden beads
blinked back at us
from the display case.
I can't fix her now.
Was she Roman or Celt?
Did she fall prey to Vespasian's
desperate logic—
all those straight roads
careering into the rounds
of hill forts and barrows—
or did she march beside him?
My daughter says, emphatically,
flinging off
museum dress-ups
and joining puzzle bones—
I hate the Romans!
I am not of these people.
But, strangers in our own home,
we are closer perhaps
than we would like to admit
to Vespasian and this unnamed girl
who at sixteen
so delicately and unwittingly
gave up this string of beads.