A Hagiography of Dust
William Cordeiro

Sand grinds away the hallowed ground it's buried.
I survey galleries of tree-fall stoned,
a dry wash stained as if a reliquary—
painted gulches gnarled like nails of ingrown

saints. I was stymied climbing over temples,
rock-tumble fossiling with petroglyphs.
The lush Triassic's crusted slime and rubble
had effervesced to desiccated rifts

until the word made flesh was breath again.
On sumps and strata of blue crumbled ribs,
assume it shivered every windblown grain;
rained ash. Those far-gone daze mirages scribbled—

I packed the fragments broken from myself
and left  
                       with nary any bones to pick,
a wreck of lithic scatter on each shelf—
potsherds and vertebrae—for I was quick

to leave it be. The miles all looked the same
except for clumps of Mormon tea. A brooding
heaven threatened flashbacks of black flames;
horizon with one twisted cottonwood.

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