Revelation

It is waking in the night to hooves
around your head stamping sand,
it is the black-gritted groans uttered
which ratchet the terror in your chest,
it is the silence which between plumed breaths
constructs an altar out of the blackness
until the hooves cast against the buried rocks
like prayer are only sparks like prayers
returned, it is the elk pawing for water,
frantic against the drought-bright stars,

this faith in the inhuman,
religion of stones and wind.