Leaching dusty timbers

into final dwelling places

this was a wind that blew dry

from aching yellow stretches

of brown stalks withering

in relinquishment of body and soul

 

A dry wind that breathed famine

into eye sockets of survivors

the sand filled skulls

of long dead animals orchestrating

pain, stenchless under a glaring sun

 

Seven years blew this wind

through empty granaries

even the dankest corners of cellars

boned and bared in dust

 

Wells hollow, echoing forgotten

water, sun at noon and

moon by night bleaching

their remotest corners

to crumbling wax

 

And then

when they had all gone into dust

on the first day of year eight

the sky blackened, huge clouds

rushed in from the west

great bucket-globs of rain

splattered the timbers,

the stalks, the skulls

 

Streams formed, rivers rushed

over caked earth into cracks

pouring underground into caves

and catchments, seven years

it rained on a world filled

past all its molecules, the waters

rising, covering all under

a thousand fathoms of dark blue

deep. Nothing moved save the deep

itself, stirring sunken stones of tombs

 

And on the first day

of the next week of years a rock

appeared above the waters, and a thousand

millenniums passed, and the rock stood

where waters had abated and only sand

and dust stretched yellow into time

 

No legends were born on this rock.

It still stands there, stubborn to the

whirl of years, its accident of life

forgotten in the spread of stars