I want to be a geode, sly and surreptitious.
Split me apart. Demosthenes open wide,
all serrated tongue and semi-precious teeth.
I am redwood bark on a mossy floor,
dreaming of saguaro neighbors and
the stultifying Arizona clime.
I seek silicated perfection. I can almost feel it:
See the striations of my veins,
my ambered blood, transparent and hard.
Hold me up to the light.
Feel me grow warm in your palm like a basking reptile.
Insects and ferns float like platelets,
Locked in ageless, golden serenity.
Zen garden’s rounded repose, sand combed
carefully as hair, all flowing lines and forms,
an art nouveau maiden on her back,
her skirts a receded gravel bed.
Set me in platinum and give me to your sweetheart
with promises of forever. I want to feel
the vein of love as it quivers. But you cannot know
that my incarnations are finite.
Bury me and the earth re-absorbs. I become
the keystone of mountains, my essence shifts
by waves of salt water and rain.
A couple of millennia in the furnace of magma pockets,
The waxing and waning of polar ice caps,
the hammering of meteors, flecked with stardust.
Pound me into grit and I might find my way
into an oyster’s hinged gullet.
One gleam on my back in play yard dirt
may alert a child who considers me worthy of keeping
in an oatmeal box under her bed
where I shall rattle for ten years
before being ground into the carpet.
Track me out.
I want to be the dust on your feet,
I want to be a pebble in your shoe.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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Poems like this...
How can I say this? I enjoy reading it. The story is great. The descriptions are wonderful although, as usual, some of the meanings elude me. Once again I have found a poem I like that makes me struggle. I can never break up my sentences to make it fit a form like this. Naturally I have trouble reading them when they are. My favorite part was - Set me in platinum and give me to your sweetheart with promises of forever. But having it broken up throws me. I like the ending. For me it was saying the spirit of the small stone would much rather be stuck in a shoe where it can travel than in a shoebox under the bed. Interesting choice of stones to list for the title. I'd be interested in hearing how you came to choose them. Do they have a signifigance that I don't grasp? Or is it because they are you personal favorites?
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Since you ask, I break up lines for a couple of reasons-- one is rhythm. I think a poem reads at a certain speed depending on where your lines break; also, breaking up the images also invokes images at certain times for the reader. That's my personal theory, anyway, make of it what you will.
I like your interpretation of a stone's spirit, and that's partially what I was thinking. I was mostly interested in exploring our ideas about infinity and immortality-- we think of stones as immortal, unbreakable things, when in fact, they aren't. They change-- it takes longer, but they do change. Yet we project this idea of implacability onto them-- saying things are "written in stone," for example.
I chose the stones for the title because they have occult significance. Humanity has always ascribed mystical qualities to natural objects, and stones, of course, being precious, have been a favorite for magic. Moonstone is associated with, of course, the moon, which means it's a stone to increase psychic power, dreams, and creativity. Opal, because of its many colors, is a very powerful stone, believed to be useable in any type of spell or ceremony as a stand-in for other stones. Tiger's Eye is for strength, and Jade is for luck, wealth, and healing.
But. . . a rock is just a rock, right? Ultimately, like us, it's dust in the wind.
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You ARE a Poetic Geode!
Easing your words into vug and fissure of chthonic recess creating crystalline evocations of our peripatetic vexistence your verse reverberates with observations viewed through the pineal gland of the thirdeye Heartland.
The elements are eloquently explored here Pie; earth of course, fire ("magma""light"), water (oyster,waves of salt water and rain) and air as dust.
Thread binding an underlying theme to this piece is transition. Constant flux juxtaposing the apparent stillness of the earth and supposed immobility of rock/minerals - effective.
And so bountiful are the semantic gems which crop up continuously along the metamorphing mindtrip, it would be simply replanting the entire deposit into the comment box herein. So I will merely highlight one almost at random:
I seek silicated perfection. I can almost feel it:
See the striations of my veins,
my ambered blood, transparent and hard.
Yeah I can feel it Pie. I can feel it.
Cheers
gneissisonG
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WOW!
language: 4, rhythm: 4, subject: 4, tone: 4, form: 4.
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