Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Lysis Strata

You know...
The buildings in these parts
Are meant to slow way down
To dreams...
We animals,
Our lives
And once and future
Needs.
And they're made
More or less of stone,
That was laid down
In ancient seas.
They'll teach you that
In school, 
Though,
It's a fact that you can see.

My home was once an ocean,
And in it's water their lived 
Things.
They lived and ate and prospered
Till,
They fell 
As mortal beings.
And when they hit 
The bottom,
Of the ocean,
And their lives;
They piled on slow
Rotation
Upon the coldest
Saline pyre.

So the muscles of 
My neighbors
That I couldn't hope
To share;
They are bulging
And quite useful,
Or were once,
At getting 
What they'd bear.
In their case,
Way back,
It was stone,
Beneath our land;
Long after 
All those swimming
Beings
Rained down
On ocean sand.

And it's funny that I 
Have this fossil,
Chock a block to play;
With light upon the beginnings
And endings
Most of all our days.
A canvas colored painting
Accreted of those lives;
From tens of millions
Moments that most human's
Won't surmise.

(But that ain't the whole
Darn story friend...
Not in the least.)

All mountains hold
With features like
Their crumbling
Stone facades;
Their tendency to
Tumble
Being helped
By something odd.
And this oddity 
Has much more to
Do with you
Than taught,
By the vessels of 
Our memory,
Observant at some cost.

Entombed within the mountains,
Which, to some might climb from time,
Are the simple shapes of life
Which trip a wo/man
In search of signs.

That life has been a constant,
No matter,
What, our history,
Though the secret
Is that you and I
Share quarry with these dreams.

This world in not
A cold stone
That is circling 
Round the sun,
But a curling
Benediction
That it carries
Something fun.

Sure, a pretty
Kiddies picture book,
All red in tooth and claw,
But also big stone mountains
Which to life too
Must be drawn.

A sign of life
Is beautiful
From a garden
And from space.
From the moaning
And the labors
Of a birth...
So at a pace.

But the buildings
That when entered
Seem to cradle us anew,
As surely were 
The intentions of
The burly construction crew;
Also have upon their face
The comedy of life,
That so long as girls
Will have it
In stone can't
Be denied.

Your hands and eyes
Might have it
That they're victims
Of the world.
As they travel down
The spiral toward
A place where all
Are born.
But be soon appraised,
If you are kind
Enough to love,
The flight of a pigeon dove
And the same of your wife;
The short life 
We were
Raining
Before the mountains
Time.


You are younger than the water.  But you are older than the stone.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was a long long poem. Quite elastic with different state variables.
And angular, not dense.

Christine Gram said...

Ugh. Faint. Gasp. Sigh.
What a beautiful read.
Delightful and illuminating.

Anonymous said...

indiana limestones sheared away by (then)glaciers and (now)dynamite.

Jenny said...

Welcome Andy.

gerry boyd said...

not a great fan of short lines but I give you props on execution of that form. I stuck with it and was amply rewarded. thank you.

Unknown said...

PO

Brevity seems to escape me. But seriously, thanks for reading it at all! Thanks.

Christine,

Glad you survived it. It is hard to know what others like. Thanks.

Neil,

Yeah, I'd never imagined the glacier and dynamite together in the sense of our quarrymen's actions. Seems kinda obvious... thanks for mentioning that.

Jenny

Goodness me thank you for inviting me. What a force of nature you can be!
Thank you.

Gerry,

Kind of you to read something so long and thin.
Thank you very kindly.