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.