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first published in The Tall-Lighthouse
Review
December 2004 (ed. Les Robinson),
ISBN No. 1 904551 19 X
And Still the Stones
The house shrinks
and stretches,
sighs
at night creaking the floorboards,
top
of the house, crow's nest,
light
and air, walls bare.
Slice
of heaven we agreed,
lazy
rocking evenings,
day's
work done, ascending
to
meet the sun, watch it go down
in
a smother of clouds.
Some
laws of nature still persist.
Sod's
law, the rain on your parade,
your
barbecue, wedding, laundry,
deck
chair, bacci, papers.
The
minutiae of it all. Things.
What
are they without people
but
relics to be studied by archaeologists.
A
ribbon surviving flesh, faint lavender.
A
shank of auburn hair without a head.
Gallstones
in a jar, his and hers.
Note:
his were bigger than his mum's.
Curiosities
to be puzzled over
trying
to put it all together. What sense?
Yes,
I still take stones
to
your grave site to confuse them.
Pink
toned, blue grey, granite.
Stones
from Alderney, Carteret, Cromer,
Norwich,
Aldeburgh, Duluth, Dartmoor, Leide,
a
cobblestone from Praha
that
I'd like to think Mozart stubbed his toe on,
that
tripped Kafka, who swore as I did,
the
third time round. Round and round,
lost
amongst the ever changing streets.
Judi Benson
this
poem and others is available for listening to at "Writers'
Hub", Podcast
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