Elegy for Erratics

I believed hydrangeas 
purpled from pennies 
stuck in the ground at their feet— 

              But science says it's the amount of acidity
or aluminum in the soil. 

                                                    On this coast, we're sinking
at least three feet lower, buckling in the middle 
like an overcrowded shelf.  Too much

water or too little. Thirst of leaf
and bloom overlapping on every tongue.

                                          Lithologies exhuming
shells of every composition— glacial
stones in a farmer's field, the bodies
of two dead bees on my threshold.