here is another poem in the P. series
Geppetto finds
the stone
Even a lonely
man who
has never
married, whose
only fragrant
memory
ended in
Venice,
suffers the
need to bury
his loved
ones.
After having
fallen, unexpectedly,
into the
Ionian Sea, Geppetto’s sister
drowned in her
lover’s arms,
and while the
lover held and wept
in caricature,
it was Geppetto
who dug the
grave and buried her bones.
While digging
his tears slid
down his
cheeks and splashed
onto the
earth, weakened the soil
allowing the
spade to slide in
like a Spanish
dancer on his knees
across the
polished dance floor. Geppetto
found a stone;
a single stone
amidst the earth.
Defying the
moment’s gravity; in disregard
of the strange
stares
from his
sister’s suitably attired
lover and her
gathered
enemies and friends,
Geppetto
reached out
his hand
and lifted
free the stone.
He studied the
stone while the crowd
murmured and fidgeted;
noticed
the dark
sheen, the minute dimples
that meant it
was not as smooth
as it
appeared, its unexpected lightness
and the white
vein that encircled it
like a wedding
ring. The stone had two fissures
that ran like
two rivers along the surface
almost
parallel, as if great pressure
once threatened
to rend it into pieces.
He plopped the
stone
into his white
shirt pocket;
felt the weight
of it match his heart.
He kept it as
company
through
evenings and days
as a marker to
his sister’s
memory, not knowing
that its
proximity to his sadness
instigated
change.
The stone
began to believe
it was a seed,
waited
with the
patience of rock
for planting to
give it birth.
Meanwhile his
heart
found itself,
perhaps
in sympathy
with the stone,
lighter as the
months passed.
No comments:
Post a Comment