Rock

by Shiela Col

 

Unmoved and solid

contorted into a perennial and guarded glower

defiantly only ever that shape

 

until it is time

 

for change.

 

wind weathers edges and water tears at cracks

unbounded and sudden quaking and splitting of the earth

boulders rolling and breaking

pebbles divided into

hundreds of thousands of small and lonely grains

 

and nothing can be built upon me that will not sink and be swallowed by the eons of splits .

 

once only knowing this hard heart

 

now

 

spatted out into the ten billion things

 

I suddenly hold air and water and the vastness of my skin touches the sky now

warmed and golden by the beginning and end of every sun

 

earth fills the spaces that it could not before

and settles in collective shapes that could not have been made

in places that could not have been settled

 

though I am small, I am immense

 

I am forests now

life pulsates from vacancy

 

the water that once ripped

now calmly laps and caresses and smoothes my shapes

a gentler reprise of the tenacious beating

That I thought would have ended me

 

I am still alive

I am still alive

 

I        am   still    alive