Dissolutions

Driftwood logs easily become beached sharks,

and straying bushes bushwhacked insects,

even mastodon bones turn into boulders in time’s darkness

but windblown pillars prove impervious to sects

of wandering nomads over passing millennia.

Time turns the canyons into unfinished prairies,

old islands tilt and receive volcanic force: they are

inconsequential and yield to frothing seas.

The child who teetered at the edge of surf

after twenty summers harnesses himself to the crest

and slides beyond rips and overwhelming years.

Before his death, he endured tectonic majesty

and with no more pain than his emetic teeth;

now he is at one with a crumbled chrysalis.

So tides and cloud formations, so perfect days

and unseen lightning mirrored on the moon.