ELEMENTAL
Is the word the work
Of some elder who quarries
The green mountain
For the hard deposit,
Refines it under black dust
That a bellows blows red,
Hammers it to a wafer
On the white anvil
Until it can carry its own loss,
The anger of the withering fire,
The unstruck echo of the mountain,
Yet succumb to breath
Like pollen to the breeze?