The Crushed House in Rockville

In southwestern Utah’s canyons,
Where the vegetation is spare,
You can see the Earth is crumbling

Everywhere. Intermediate
Stages between sand and mountain,
Mud and million-year cliff strata

Are elsewhere obscured by dirt, trees,
And buildings growing over them—
The truck-sized boulders, house-sized stones

Lying around on broken mounds
That in these parts just sit there, bare,
Motionless for hundreds of years.

On the canyon roads, the small slides
Of fist-sized, skull-sized rocks aren’t rare,
While their parent fractures hover

Over them, not at all hidden,
Heaps of them, broken as bread crumbs,
Just so still you don’t notice them

Except that one day, that one year,
When some tourists or the neighbors
You never got to know are crushed

Driving, hiking, sitting at home
Watching a holiday program
As a little more Earth lets go.