Chalk

The hill you stand on is a fallen sea.
For thirty million years the light
was gathered in by lives the size of dust —
small wheels of calcite, rimmed like suns —
and when each one was done with shining
it let go, and came down
slower than snow:
a centimetre in a thousand years,
through water that has no name now.

Then the sea forgot itself
and became a place to stand.

The whiteness underfoot is not absence.
It is everything that ever fell,
pressed thin, still holding
the light it grew by.