Rock-a my soul

I can’t speak for you, would struggle to describe you,

but really I just want to touch in with lasting things.

Vegetable matter solidifies into the substance of my meat.

You know what I mean.

Irregular impacts create my irregular contours

and then I look at them and think, beautiful.

I do the same with you.

Perhaps you rolled down from one of the high points

I can see from here, or you bubbled up from below,

sheared and scorched in no time at all.

Now I think you are a created thing

(you are created one way or another),

but now I think you were a poured liquid

(a poured liquid one way or another),

but now I think you are a human thing,

a liquid mixed and poured by some person around here,

then eaten away, kicked to the path edge,

and still resisting the return to liquid.

I can’t speak for you, but I’m trying

to touch in with lasting things, adjusting my footing

to anticipate the big wave, not something approaching,

but just in case it’s beyond the horizon.

I washed you, set you on a desk. We are

solid, faulted and still. Where could I

wind up when the earth shifts again?

If this rock…

If this rock is a walkie talkie

then perhaps I could walk my dog

gerel by remote control, a long leashless

leash tethering me in thoughtspace

to the core of the earth, ensuring

my words move continents.

If this rock is a honky tonk lowdown barefisted

harmonica playin’ jazz whiz

then the music of the spheres is not classical

but bluesy, and this here rock could be

a microphone, capturing words flung out

then sung down the rock of the ages

to the skeleton of gaia, the molten core

or hard iron teeth at the chasm center

the fueling furnace making us shimmy and spin

around a larger caterwauling rock on fire.

Only if.

rock seed river: flow

let my mouth be a river
and the fury, flurry, and sinew of water always on the move
of thoughts flung free from pool and eddy
to ripple and verve within the dugout parts of me
let it ride let the water always be clear,
the translucent ripples of me flowing.

allow the world as water washing through me
bring to the fount of my mouth -
and through - a continuous waterfall
of verse, uni- and poly-, the many rivers
rivering up and through.

let me be a gracious grateful and graceful riverbank
which is also ever changing:
now the water dislodges one dark pearl
this poem this black roundling to burnish me
tumble and jumble and hollow me
make clacking music with other river poem rocks
now the water dislodges one dark pearl
this poem this black roundling to burnish me
inside and out, a seed of water's dark wholeness
carrying to the ocean of birth.



near winter solstice '2011

Prompt: Listen to Rocks

Whether small, round, or jagged, looking like a Goddess or a cavern, go find a rock and listen to it. Write a poem of what it says to you, what poem it wants you to write. It could be a fantastical rock, as in J's "New Discoveries in Familiar Places" or it could be a pebble from the walkway to your apartment.

If you are in a zany mood, you could have the shape of the poem reflect the shape of the rock, or include a picture. Perhaps the rock is telling stories of its history, its forging or friends. Geologic time moves at a different pace, so listen close: some rocks whisper; others shout.


Tags: Poem, Rock, [Poet's Moniker]

Image credit: Scooter Cascadia, Sedona, Walk along Oak Creek to Cathedral Rock, January '2011