The Poet on bedrock is sequence at the tempo of forgetting

adagio for the ground

i.

Say it slower. Slower. Slower than the breath that’s saying it.

Stone is not like a song. It is the song, at this tempo: one vowel that began as shells and still hasn’t closed its mouth.

You were born in the middle of a syllable. You’ll die before the consonant. You lean on the hum and call it floor.

ii.

The mayfly lands on the boulder and calls it the world. From the mountain’s side you are the flicker. Which of you is the ground depends on whose clock is asking.

iii.

Every law was once a weather that stayed.

iv.

The quarry stamps each block: STONE. It doesn’t say this stone, or ours. It’s like a voice that has gone unanswered so long it forgets it has an accent.

v.

Lift the chair after forty years. The floor keeps four small hollows shaped like sitting.

That’s how the platform comes back, dented and saying nothing happened.

vi.

Every thread that crossed the loom left the loom leaning. Walk into the next valley. The threads there swear by a different upright, the cloth hangs another way, and nobody is lying.

vii.

No shovel reaches this forgetting. It isn’t under anything. It is still arriving.

Some ghosts are gone in an afternoon. This one takes an epoch to fade, so we pour our footings on it.

To hear it move you would need a slower heart.

viii.

Earthquake: the whole sentence, spoken once at your speed.

ix.

So build as though you believe it. Trust the granite. Hinge the house. Leave a seam in every wall, a place to give toward what the ground is still becoming.