Outsiders

You don’t always notice them.
The thorn and tangle of years
 
has smudged their alien form, but there –
under the berries and briar, the lizards’ hot
 
flickering, a slow-worm curled
in their bulks’ cool hollow – they urge
 
their granite stolidity, their right
to be where they stand. No return now
 
to arid slopes, mountain’s sterility,
wind’s hard blowing. Too
 
ponderous to go further, the force
that had driven them spent, deposited
 
in an alien land, seeming dull
in the shadows of flickering trees, still
 
each molecule bears a memory
of feldspar, mica, quartz
 
and glitters if touched by the sun.
 

Gabriel Griffin

published in And the Story Isn’t Over, ed. Anne Stewart, 2009, poetry p f