ALL THAT REMAINS

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.