Welcome To a Rock

Inundated, air-bubbling

rock – in – a- glass friend

I shall emulate you,

your prolific confusion of

amber and pink and

most of all green

I have freed you of dirt

soil rich with mud and

crawling slimy things

It encased you, coffin – suffocated you

and you with such a fine coat

I give you water that you may cleanse

cleanse into vibrating life again

compacted life, fusions of eras

never seen by my eyes,

prints of feet long dead upon your shell,

scrapes from obtrusions never

suffered by me, scents

that clung sinuously to you

in frosts preceding my father’s birth

and his father’s birth

You melded souls of some earth

somewhere foreign, shared element

heat and pressure, mill ground bone

liquid flesh, animal fire

plant muck, shit, mire

You entered, withstood and divided

realms so permanently virgin

so unknown to existence of thought

pure, divine, the stuff that

whole solar systems define,

all stars, all suns,

all comets losing their brief tails

joined a willing force in you

accented you in full arrival dress,

your amber and pink and most of all

a cloak of earth’s infinite green.

 

– Hugh Findlay

Hugh Findlay lives in Durham, NC, and would rather be caught fishing. He drives a little red MG, throws darts on Tuesdays, reads and writes a lot, and makes a pretty good gumbo. His poems have appeared in The Dominion Review, Literary Accents, and New Southerner.