God for Bones

It's almost rain, almost a storm
Aligning with the barren gaps
Red and dun for lack of water.

Detritus keeps reappearing
From somewhere outside the known world,
From somewhere underneath the mind,

Hints of a shortcut through the woods
Straight across the solemn desert
Paved with the fossils of mistakes,

The granaries and treasuries
Of misplaced civilizations,
The pillared bones of dinosaurs,

Of elephants, camels, horses,
Anteaters and saber-toothed cats,
A solid floor of minerals

Laced with forgotten instructions
For making the stones rise and move.
You'd never guess a continent

Of green from the sunburned temples,
The bleached calcium carbonates.
You'd imagine an oasis,

Some time when the world was lusher,
Never guessing this is that time,
Now when the god of bones is hushed,

Before the storm you're hoping for
Draws each interlacing tendril
Up from the broken white-tiled floor

To reconnect the continents
Of might have been and has to be,
Devouring every splintered never.