Our Lady of Acid Rain

With the lime of her body

sweetening the forest floor

in ecstatic effacement,

this plaster Virgin melts earthward,

the body of a woman imagined

free from corruption, safe in heaven,

her virtue like a stored cask.

Mold now greens the bulk of her,

taking her back, once all-white,

church-pure, immaculate.

Blurred, eroded by the sour tears

of an exhausted sky, her face

like ours someday.

A half-teepee of stone slabs shelters her

on a spur off the main trail.

Clearly others have found her,

depositing evidence of devotion—

various seashells, a candle

that spattered the rock with wax,

a rosary, a perfect red maple leaf,

pine cones, coins.