Written in stone

All in 

One moment

I understood the

Buddha's parable about walking

with a stone in your shoe-.

I suddenly knew

It could happen to anyone

Anytime 

and after inspecting the painful

if minuscule annoyance

I found the stone

Made of calcified fragments, merely

Memories compressed and pushed out

like bone spurs sloughed off 

and re-attached to thought

Like a tumor.

Every step, someone else's shoes -

That was

Us

Now all that is left

is the loose stone

from the right shoe. 

Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), 'Woman tying her shoe' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Trace

The difference between a clean slate
                                and a blank one
is a twist of lime-
stone,
made into a helix,
stacked with sedimentary
                            amphibious bones 
& the ligature of
dead words
                    around broken muscles,

like the lines left lingering
and entwined, woven through
resting vessels
                     slack and un-taut
across some surfaces
namely, Others
                              in a hurry to sea
this contrast.

The blackboard could not be red
in such low light.

Anyway,
erasure like evolution was never complete.


Painting (watercolor) by Thomas Girtin [Public domain], (undated) via Wikimedia Commons.

The Sculptor recoils at the mess made

♦

The stone may remain
a mark, a mary,
an adam or a bone,
and thus, it surpasses us.

Immortal or always dead-
This
does not explain
heat retention
or justify the cold
kept on and in.

♦

Medusa met her match in a mirror,
a moment forestalled by the vividness-
as perpetual disturbance or hair on end-
as in, the felt self
never having been
so repulsed before

She,
sentenced to see, only.
Muted.
She makes more matter
for company-posterity,
as in a collective semblance
with what is given.

♦

By stone, in stone
the smallest settle
together. Bolder.

Be-cause con-crete crystals,
gold dust flecks spark-les
closer to the smooth surface.

Reflection, like passing winds
erode the images cast in like-ness
breaks down
all That
the stone hoped to be.

♦


Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion, and Galeta in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Whose in the way of whom

What does it matter

if water may hollow stone,

it also melts ice,

and is able to absorb

its likeness

to become more of itself.

Who can blame the wind 

for putting pressure

on structures we've built

opposing its whims,

where we erect our wants;

which is why we tremble.

Unlike the stone

that is grounded

lays low, erodes slowly

and goes nowhere fast.

Water I care

emote a dust in the wind?

Amidst stone cold silence,

I heard the wind whisper

and the water splattered back.

This poem was inspired by the poem Wind, Water, Stone by Octavio Paz.

Photo credit By Sequeira, Paul, Photographer (NARA record: 8464471) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Description: Homeowners lined a lake beach with cars in order to prevent erosion threatening their dwelling residences. 

A Pinnacle of Stony Tries

A Pinnacle of Stony Tries

The mountain started it.

Imposing its challenge

upon sky and sea.

I must accept it.

I am compelled to conquer.

I've become drawn to touching,

sharing senses,

exchanging skin.

Stoicism is a rock.

Yeah, right.

Both are metonyms,

found in caverns up high,

like oxymoronic holes in the sky.

Spelunking down the spyglass,

on stalagmite stairs;

pointing the way

in collected columns,

that climb

like us.

Rocks feel pressure,

cave in and crumble;

like grains of time,

an avalanche of life,

too much for itself

to hold it together.

Ascending I dare to grapple,

with textures and temperatures,

gradients by degrees

of warmth rest

in the velvet granite

flesh, accepting,

caressing sand paper cheeks

I trust the friction.

Finding my weight

propped against the mass,

I hold the balance.

The weight erodes, sloughed

in pebbles of problems;

raining by rocks in applause,

anticipating their early release,

from master sculptor,

whose has been a model prisoner,

Medusa obeying and repelling.

A climb is not a race.

A scale includes the middle march;

all possible paths, knobs,

and steps fossilize.

Planning each step,

I am pulled up by my own

labored breath,

my stomach in knots secure my spot.

I am too heavy on myself.

Yet,

the higher I get,

the further away,

I like to stay

because now I can see

all that I've known,

becoming strange, deranged.

I strain to focus on all that is,

and it clearly became,

miniature and small.

It is meaningless,

without this fight

to keep holding on,

even if I never make it

to the top

and Fall,

forgetting

all about

looking back

down

at the waiting world,

I found my wings

while giving up.

Image By George Edward Mannering [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo of Emmeline Freda du Faur (1862-1974) first female mountaineer in New Zealand.