Thursday 12 July 2012

How The Shale Feels


I know how the shale feels.
That thin drifted piece, naked
in a pool of beach-cracked rock.
I know how each grain of
windswept waveswept sand
rubs a little and rubs again.
I know the effaced (un)importance
of the bedrock we press underfoot.
How it will not bend, but slowly erode.
How it will never bend,
but only snap once the scouring
is scoured enough.
I know you, you pressed out slab
of mud, once-alive remnant of
a time before, who teamed with microbe life.
I know that soft, soft weight of years,
that suffocating sleep
that slowly turns slip to stone.
And then the voice saying, We
will sit here. The tide’s on the turn.
Let us sit here and watch the slow sunset.
A good place to sit. And the hand
that touches the slab, small now,
scoured to thinness, feels the heat
of the day and the smoothness to the palm
and thinks nothing.
I know how the shale feels.

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