Shell

Structure of organic stone
this vacant house
built molecule on molecule
by the body of a mollusk
witlessly devising spectrums,
stripes, spots,
coruscations
which it could never see
or wonder at
nor even hear within
(emptied of its mortal substance)
the sea which echoes certain power forever;

This pristine whorl,
all life, all death,
all stench of either purged
by endless salt
and water and the motion
of the moon
in death, rather
in absence of life—
this shell in my hand
is remote and hollow
as a Gothic ruin
striped by reformers’ zeal,
emptied of both decay and life
by lost belief—
is as nacreous,
miraculously colored,
brilliant, heartrending and dead.

Still shells contain within
the whispered roar
of eternity.