Tuesday, November 10, 2009




Field of Stones


By the river’s brown belch Jasmine
finds the whitest stone ever seen.
It’s opaque though veins and seams
glow with light and hidden streams
of colour. ‘It’s wet, that’s why it shines’.
I zip it up and later put all the day’s stones,
like ‘the snake’ and the ‘good writer’ on the cairns
at our backdoor. I try and remember the names,
but already many of the older piles,
each nugget a cipher for a field of time,
are lost, or as inscrutable as the lines
of Nazca. Who shall puzzle how they align,
the choice of shapes, how they incline
to the setting sun? Only I will, for a while.

9 comments:

hope said...

I use to do that with sea shells as a kid...amazed at how colorful they were when wet.

And thanks to Rachel, I have a "stone from Scotland" which stays in my desk at work. I often pick it up and roll it around in my hand on bad days, for it reminds me that the world is bigger than my office and filled with kinder people..especially if you know where to look.

Nicely done, my friend.

mapstew said...

Meself and the youngest always take a pebble or stone home when we go to the coast.

Lovely.

:¬)

Barlinnie said...

Beautifully created.

Marion McCready said...

I really love this, beautiful mix of imagery and idea.

Dr. Jeanne Iris said...

A lovely metaphor for a Monday morning. Go raibh maith agat!
I often wonder about the possible memory of rocks and stones. They do witness so much history, don't they?

Kat Mortensen said...

I like this very much—the way the lines flow backwards and forwards like the stream where the rocks are found. Do cairns typically have rocks that represent different things? I did not know that.

Thanks for the visit. My sincere condolences to your wife and your pal.

Kat

Tess Kincaid said...

Beautiful rhythm. I loved reading this one aloud. I've popped over from Kat's place.

Tess Kincaid said...

I just added "Sad Cafe" to my Netflix queue. I adore Simon Callow and can't believe I've not seen this one!

Totalfeckineejit said...

They (the stones) sound almost like headstones and markers of burial chambers for time and memory,a lovely sad poem.

It's nice to take a bit of the 'outside' home.Currently on my desk I have a marble-white stone, 2 mussel shells, a crabs leg, 2 oak leaves, a sweet spanish chestnut and husk, and four small twig/sticks that look to me like dinosaur skulls.