There is in this place as little as can be

imagined, so things stand in for each other:

metal turns to wood, wood

to bone, ruins to wrack—

in this already regretting wind,

both scourge and the salt to heal it.

The air is most of the materials

needed for the church and the best

of the gutting fire. This creamy crag

is a flushwork of creatures, late of the land.

Moving mudstone is a tracery of bubbles

forming, bursting, flat and still as water,

thick and permanent as the first render—

a thin layer that dries as it cracks.