poems of pebbles

I have been doing a lot of dissertation writing, which means I have less energy to write blog posts. But I have managed to churn out some poems to collect some wisps of impressions I've had lately. I've been thinking a lot about stones lately, I don't know why. It's springtime--I should be noticing the birds and butterflies and greenery here. Instead I keep noticing the stones. How about that.

A blessed Orthodox Palm Sunday and Holy Week!

COBBLESTONES 
cobbled stones, broken stones
hewn from some distant place, I'm told
by slave children in a foreign land
dashed against one another
into fragments
then carved into cubes
to cover their mishapen shame
sewn together in a tapestry
of granite, grouted ground.
Thus out of the brokenness
is made something whole:
a street
a walkway
a path
upon which one is apt to stumble
when hasty steps catch
the edge of a wayward cobble
For it seems even wholeness, once achieved
must bear
the scars of former brokenness
within itself
within the spaces
where grouting has been washed away.

WRITING IN MARBLE

  Sometimes writing is like weaving

with all imaginable colors

and all that is needed

is a bit of patience and a loom

and the words come, the pattern emerges

a vibrant image that covers over

the backside of one's imperfect thoughts.

Other times writing is like painting

the picture in one's mind

is gradually crafted to the canvas

with colors so warm and soft

they mix smoothly on the palette of ideas

and after all the days, all the layering

of paint and perspective, darkness and light

broad brushstrokes and fine

it all comes together

a masterpiece.

But other days writing is

the harder task

that of taming

a towering slab of marble

into something of beauty

of trying to find something alive

amid the heavy stiffness of a disinterred boulder

of taking a chisel to one's thoughts

that have grown hard as stone

there are no guides here, as on the weaving loom

the templates of the canvas have fallen away

there is only a boulder

a chisel

and a hopeful seeing

past the seen.

TOMBSTONES
How ironic it is
the graves of the dead
we crown with stone.
For stones, though dead,
despite their cold durity
endure forever.
And we, though supple
with the warm breath of life
must see decay.
And so it is that
to be living
means to be impermanent
And to be dead is
to persist.
Still
I would rather have breath
but for one moment
than the permanence
of none.

ROSES, BARELY BLOOMING

There is a spectacular place

not far from here

where one can behold

a bush of roses

as they begin their late winter ascent

stretching up

not from the soil of a garden

but from the patchwork quilt

of cobblestones

and frozen earth.

And in their clinging climb

up the nearby wall

the roses, barely blooming,

yet afflict passersby

with the whispering warmth of joy.

For beneath the rocks all around

lay a world, so filled with life

that when the seams of separation

it escapes in wisps

plunging up through the decrepit

into the staleness

of our own.