A whale’s beached ribs

 A whale’s beached ribs

fly
in the open air of deepest cavern,
at last floating above sea,
below the earth
where
the crushed life we call a
spiral-shell-turned-limestone
wears and weathers its all-
containing
star-stuff
into the invisible dust of a new spring’s clear,
delicious flow
to the waiting hands
of the innocent young
who fear not the wild water
and so
into the made, grown body of another being
that we deign to call
alive
they flow
This is time
And it is right to not understand
It is felt
1/18/22

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