An Ode to Ge (Geode)

Just a rock
not smooth but rough
around the non edges of
its intrinsic spheric
nature, structure.

No pebble-but a rock-
that can be concealed in a fist,
hiding inside;
taunting in the turtles way,
tucking, sucking inside
its plated prehistoric shell.

But you can feel this fragment
disintegrate, perish and dissolve;
volcanic cryptocrystalline quartz,
sprinkling its sedimentary exterior
unsentimentaly and silty in my hand.

A rock is a terrestrial fragment made from
dust and sand, compressed and forged,
carrying and holding its inert unstable state,
and insignificant weight,
posing inanimate and dormant.

Lightly, lacking meat in the middle
empty unlike the turtle, hollow,
wallowing in carbonate bubbles.

Listen-inside
as agate bands,
jasper whispers,
and amethysts get kissed...
Stacking up of crystal spears
on corroding foundations;
earth from the inside out.

This little lava rock
life forgets, brushes aside
unless something special is hiding
inside. We, tools, crack
down the middle
to see the little
beauty, chaos, surprise
Lies
inside
a lone little
living stone.



Image from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. Pictured interior of amethyst geode.

Things we take for granite

Walking by a pile of ordinary granite
my daughter noticed a glimmer.
Delighted with the sparkly sight,
she asked me why it shone so,
It's just DG, I said plainly,
So, you don't know,
she replied rhetorically.

I too remember when
the world was more than real
you could feel the newly forming
foundations building up
under you, from deep inside
your hot energetic core
spreading slowly like land
determined and undeterred
not oblivious and permeable
nor in the hurry of water
its mad dash with a splash
molten rock chooses to ooze instead
I remember a time
when steam jets barely cooled our fires
and together we tamed the wild world,
before us digging up and burying forevermore
weary from moving around in endless Revolutions
We finally settled.

Like throwing pepper around the perimeter
so pedestrian people wont notice
tremors of short fused attentions
unable to make the connection, cross the bridge
to take the leap, to draw a rough line,
to reconnect
the connection of
the extra and ordinary.

From leading edges, subdued and stable
the matrix locks its labyrinth
in the basement
of continental islands.
Granite is there.
Unanimously equigranular,
metamorphically unique,
on this marble rolling
in concrete space.

Catching the light just right
the quartz and phenocrysts insist
on throwing off latent sparks;
like kindled memories of plutonic days
mingled in potassium feldspar rays
streaked pink with passion
the blushing boulders
pushed by Sisyphus
eternally carry us forward
as though not moving a pebble,
or grain, or granule, granum, granite
swallowing our diamonds along the way
decomposing
and eroding
molding
the upper crust
down to
their carbon core.

One should never ignore
the things we take for granite.



Image by Halvard Hatlen (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.