Am I now to build Zapotec temples within me?
But I have no taste for towers.

A milpa then? A 6,000-year-old maize garden
of the mind is my sun-worship site.

(And I have built my ship of death, oh, have I,
of knockweed and fumes—

it’s fear of rank inadequacy stinks so bad,
afraid I’m diving deep

and constantly coming up cold—)

I oppose temples, object to the mountainous
externalization of might.

Might, in me, is not erected,
but absorbed

from corn, water, slaked lime,
ground to a paste:

masa, the grainy, foundational force
that lifts and lights me.

Yes, you had it right. Before masa, the dreamed-of
mano of the future

becomes an interior grinding stone to scrape
the realm of concept completely,

picking up time’s loose minerals, each moment
a metate, concave receptacle

for the grinding rock’s motion. Rock the earth
built for me, cobbled within me.