Marcus Aurelius
sacrifices white animals
at the citadel to Jupiter,
grandeur of cloth-draped
witnesses described in
stone tableau
A shepherd rests,
anonymous thinker
at the temple on the hill
upon a kaolin plate
watermarked
Kao-ling
Columns
carved from bones
and clay
dug from marrow
of the big raw
outdoors
It’s a common denominator,
manufacturing leveraged on
material extracted from
Mother Earth’s back,
her teeth ground to dust
for our lithopaned
plates
~ Lady