Among the plane trees, where cicadas screech,
a tumbled column has split. From the fracture,
fossils protrude. Did priests guess the stone
had been seabed? One tiny limpet shell,
its fluting immortalised before gods,
is proud to fingers caressing that other,
elusive, silent country. Slower
than acid rain, more rapacious than locusts,
on a sacred hill, a tinkling flock
of goats is making deserts. Last words
for poems are worm casts at ebb tide:
distinguished far off, close up are crudely
made, tell-tale leftovers.
By David Selzer