This Island Is a Stone
Raking the sand, I leave only the infinite
trickling behind; our first bed bore your
parents’ memories. This one grows weeds. The
heavenly bamboo (a shrub and not a grass)
issues white petals and inedible red fruit. My
fingertip callouses have softened from disuse;
coyotes no longer answer my yips and howls.
Who replies to liars anyway? A snail’s love
dart impales the object of its affection, but
often inconveniently. This is not a metaphor
for bad sex, but a means of transferring an
allohormone. Today the overburdened creeks
erode their banks and 492 seconds after
departing the sun a ray greets my lawn. I snap
the towel at the fly on the door, but miss
again. The once sacred now lies open and
emptied; a few months ago my father could not
remember my birthdate although he recognized
the season. Some totals may never satisfy.
If I collect my life’s accumulated wastings, will
that sum temper me or merely accentuate the
fool? Nothing is as it seems. We mark our
remaining days with unread books. These
waves are plotted creases, this island is a stone.
“This Island Is a Stone” was published in MockingHeart Review in September 2017. I am grateful to editor Clare L. Martin for publishing this piece.
O at the Edges 
I like how one hundred topics can make their way into a single poem of yours…
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Sometimes my muse is a buzzing fly, alighting here and there, but only for a fraction of a second…
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I wouldn’t use a fly as a metaphor, considering how they enjoy heterospecific coprophagia!
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Well, one creature’s waste is another’s banquet!
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Several readings have taken me several different places … all ending with questions. Very good stimulus!
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Then my day is complete! That is all I ever hope to do. 🙂
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The snail’s love dart is such an apt apparatus for evoking the weight this stone-island’s “accumulation of wastings,” along with the time-dilated ardor with which it regards (as if, despite itself) its simultaneous isolation from and relationship to everything within its gravitational sphere. Who’s to say whether such allohormone infusions constitute our purest interfaces with reality, or our most misguided delusions thereof? Hmm…
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I’ve seen photos of misplaced love darts, and all I can say is OUCH! I suppose one must “have a mind of snail” or some such to appreciate (or survive) such ardor. I suppose the answer lies somewhere between purity and delusion, but I’m leaning towards delusion. 🙂
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My favourite lines were about the coyotes – “Who replies to liars, anyway?” 😛
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They always knew I was a fake coyote, but sometimes responded. 😃
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Many meaningful images on ageing
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Which I seem to be doing exponentially!
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You are not alone 🙂
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