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)
