STONEMASONS
The beauty of things was born before eyes and
sufficient to itself; the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.
- Robinson Jeffers (“Credo”)
Each stone fit into a wall of words
works across the landscape, holds
sweet notions close and chaos out.
A remnant seam along the draw,
where you saw rattlesnakes rise
entwined, kept the Bequette hogs
fat on acorns so their Durham cows
wouldn’t slip their calves, remains
after my father hauled smaller rocks
into a wall of his own. Only boulders
left, I marvel at the days and years
inched-out of the bottom with bars –
the deliberate rhythm of a heart
working at the edge of a moraine
shaping poetry to last a century.