The Gravel Maker

She pounds

stones harvested near spider lilies on the beach,

stones hidden in the ferns beneath lancewoods,

stones that tell their interiors at the touch

of her questioning palm.

She pounds

heavy stones, dug out, then pushed and dragged,

stones she leaned into her hip to carry,

stones that swell to a cairn guarding her chair

under the almond tree, in front of her house.

She pounds

stones into rocks and rocks into pebbles, and

pebbles into crumbs of pebbles. Scarred fingers

cup raw fragments. She pitches them into a heap

that puddles, piles, then pyramids.

She pounds

with a hammerhead driven by her right arm.

The dust of transformation swirls around her.

Settles on her eyelids, between her toes. She strikes fragility and shatters the fiction of stone.

 

(Cider Press Review, Winter, 2002)