Salve

SALVE

*

A salt-lake is a prayer
a Dead Sea scroll spread out
a liturgy slowly read
by timelessness.

Thou Qumran promise
Thou monastic resolve
Thou salt prophecy
Thou thought.

Here clean is.
Breath is.
Sky is, earth
Of the sacred.

Salts preserve.
Salts purify.
Feast of Purim:
If I perish, I perish.

Salts pave the bed
where desert tears
fall to die.

Salts crystalise
any which shape
falls to it from
all dimensions.

Salts flavour
the tongue that
speaks salvation.

A preservation
wind is good
air to pray in.

While castles
of salt crystals
go up any matter

to there distill
shapes into shrines
of former being

a footing takes
in the crystal flowers
we might have been.

Save us!

* * *
- Lake Eyre, June 1995