Walls

This wall is tawny sandstone
breathes heat of desert dunes
sifting, shifting in whispering winds
leaving cross-grained lion-colored layers.

This wall is black basalt
speaks echoes of earth-fire flowing
fading, slowing, slow-cooling to grey
cracking in chiselled columns, petrified palisades.

This wall is brick and it remembers
human hands, straw, clay kilns
makers and mortar, toiling with trowels
upright, reinforced, level-laid courses.

These walls are flesh and bone
remember earth, stone, dirt, dust, clay
remember sea, salt-water waves
remember air, wind, sky, rain, fire.

These walls are illusion.
Remember Truth--
the walls fall down.