Examining the Phytolith

I saw the ghost of you

nestled within your particular,

who moved among thousands

of thousands of thousands of thousands

in the way that plainlands of grass hide a witness inside

When I first learned you existed

I was reminded how some of us contain

an unborn twin’s tooth in our lining

& this your being seemed to me,

though now I know you are more

a fragment of silica so small as to be particle,

bite of white thread,

caught in daguerreotype mid-wave,

not surrender, but depletion

& therefore, an age-old story

but also a kind of long undetectable,

arrived from a previous downplunge

& now, in ascent, decanting the very earth

I have not been taking what is needed

(becoming smaller, flatter)

I am astonished there is a thing that does only that

—devours—& its particular is unharmed

Little monument, you are

the modified & derived, consequent,

consequence, forgive

all these words; I am trying

to measure something like hereafter

How you remain

& elude—like dirt after rain, a speck of sweet bone,

the tumult of root & tangle, oh

cleft that is left, inspected

for form, for secrets, still

at the end, expelled

from dark & not

the dark