The Witness of Ancient Stone
2/23/22
I wrote this a couple of years ago on this day. I'm glad to say I have healed a good bit toward people beyond the hard season of reckoning in the wake of 2020. But I still love the power of this poem.
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Ancient Stone
I wish I were one of those Holy Ones who love human faces as much as the trees
and human conversation as well as the lilting breeze
people's hands as much as branches with leaves
or partnered dance like the waves of the ocean, flirting crest-blessing and bowing to my wobbling knees.
Funny, we don't spit a curse at the ocean for knocking us off center
or disavow the radiant sun for burnt shoulders... for we know the winter.
Yet I have known the icy wrath of a human heart afraid to love, afraid of truth, who would turn away sistren to spare his soul the slightest pain of growth
and it was more terrible than the elements ruthlessly conspiring… bereft of the familiarity of the created world, empty of hope.
I wish I were one of those Holy Ones who always saw the face of God in flesh and bone.
I've oft drawn more joy not from another's
calloused heart
but ancient stone.
Image contents:[the sun rises over a field behind a stone circle]