Strata
Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry, 2012 ▪ Finalist
Strata
1.
Striations, flecks,
a smoothness to rub against.
I pocket stones.
In a stone’s lack of lack
lies a stone’s appeal.
It needs no word for want,
since stones are pure
of mineral heart, if not
completely senseless.
True, a stone is blind,
deafer than dust, oblivious
to onions sizzling in butter,
dead to the beauty
of a Saguaro or Chopin.
But one stone promises
immunity from fire,
another mimicking eternity
in the only form that I can touch.
2.
Wide-eyed
in dirt, schist
at the wrist,
breccia, talc,
gneiss, chert,
a deposit, debris,
slated, abated
and granite
to grief, I,
stratified,
quake-tossed,
river-washed,
a pebble in scree,
when stone
pockets me.
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