Dancin' Moon Songcast Ep. 66 Vocation & The Stones | POETRY SERIES EPISODE!

Vocation

 

The voice that speaks us into engagement

names, and in so many words, creates us

--creates, not constructs,

names, not labels.

 

On the edge of an ocean I break again

and again... if I am alive;

what forms is not me but rather the one

who pronounces me lifts me up

and curls me over upon myself

translucent with living coral and darting

flecks of hunger and tosses me down,

digging out, eternally, the earth,

my cradle.

 

The secret of living

is not finally taking shape

but rather being ever rearticulated

by this great benevolent tongue

 

so that continents are moved,

tide pools populated,

living creatures sent scuttling

as one shattered form draws up once again

into another, reformed,

reborn, recreated, renamed,

 

one song, measures cresting

far out toward the horizon,

sounding me into being,

humming gently even now

in these shallows.

 

The Stones

 

Any rockslide's bound to leave a mark.

Boulder fields tell stories

of old adjustments made to mountains

you can read them just like

you read the rings of trees or ponds.

I heard about a boulder field

in North Carolina once where people came

with hammers 'cause the rocks would sing

when you beat them.

I have made adjustments too

thanks to gravity and late winter

ice, but I have yet to hear

the song my rocks might sing.

I'm not in charge of this shift

in my face, only responsible

for being brittle enough to come

down. I take on a new name

with each rockslide, each

new face, names as arbitrary

as clouds because I do not do

the naming. People project their dreams

upon a silhouette, they call

me Fortress, they call me Thunder,

they call me Old Man. In South

Dakota once, they jack hammered

dead politicians into

the sides of mountains, and now faithful

pilgrims lay gifts there

at the base of the rockslide, buy

trinkets to clasp later as they

mumble their prayers. I'll not

be shaped by jack hammers, even

if you promise me gifts

and worship. I am

the work of another, faults in my granite

bright with potential. Ice and gravity

wind and water know best

what I will be when I am done.