Stone Face
You almost pity ancient rocks—
Roughed up so long
By local toughs at dive bars
On the other side of time,
Wasting away unnoticeably
As seaside bluffs
And naked outcrops
In desert landscapes.
Stoic testaments to the benefits
Of a long, beautiful battering.
Oh, they put on a good face,
Like divorced parents at orchestral recitals
Rictal smiles and wizened facies
Right up until the very end.
We see them as having healed
From some ancient indeterminate injury
Into this final, immutable form
But that’s not true at all.
Every stone you see
Is only a snapshot taken in time
From a long relentless process
Of pressure and temperature,
Wind and sea,
And no one knows it better
Than the quartzes and slates
Dolefully waiting for the day
When they too flake to dust
Like the undiscovered beaches
Leaching out from their feet.
Imagine the toll
Of such endless rumination
While standing in the ashes
Of your own ruination.
We think we have it bad—
Those rare early mornings
In the pre-dawn half light
Startled to semi-consciousness
By something that sounds like
Someone carving your name
Into a block of white granite.
Sometimes I gaze at geologic timelines—
Cretaceous, Jurassic, Permian
And I’m jealous of how much
Time rocks and dirts have had
To figure things out
And come to a kind of reckoning.
That Morton gneiss of Minnesota
Has seen some things!
Well, I’m running out of time over here.
That’s the only real wisdom
I’ve acquired to pass on.
What say you that?
Here, have another glass of wine.
I’m starting to lose my puzzled expressions,
Visages of undisguised disgust,
Nystagmuses of unbridled joy.
I used to be such an open book but
Now, no one knows what I’m thinking.
I get more and more
Stone faced.
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