Fossil
Worm to shell
shaft to womb
soul to soul
we lay so many times
that inside grew the outside
whorl by whorl.
Your script of touch
became a scroll
a star carved arabesque
upon the skin we layered
kiss by kiss,
stone flowers for
the cover of our rest;
small, so small,
my love, the
fossil of that whole.
~July 2014
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Optional Musical Accompaniment
Challenge: Words Count With Mama Zen
The ever-tersely-eloquent Mama Zen (another damn poetry blog)
asks us to write something in sixty words or less inspired by images of minute fossilized animals under
magnification. See more at the toads link above.
Optional Musical Accompaniment
Image provided by Mama Zen
This is so beautifully imagined, Hedge. The fossil pattern, though cast in stone, is very suggestive of movement - the repetition and interwoven petals - which you have magically transformed into words and images... If only all ancient loves could be captured with such precise clarity.
ReplyDeleteThank you Kerry.Movement, despite petrification...a lot like the past.
DeleteA new favorite. All the parts laid out so suggestively, and the inside becoming out, and all the double-meanings especially at end. I am not in situation to write long, but wonderful poem. k.
ReplyDeletekiller final pairing, Hedge ~
ReplyDeleteA beautiful write, Hedge.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful...so very, very.
ReplyDeleteKerry already wrote (most eloquently) about what caught my attention: the sensation of movement. This is really beautiful, Hedge.
ReplyDeleteYour center lines...
ReplyDelete"became a scroll
a star carved arabesque
upon the skin we layered
kiss by kiss,"
...for me, especially mostly because of the pairing of star and carved, I think.
Love where this image took you or rather where you brought it. :)
So beautiful. Old loves are so often the best remembered. I've had Elton John in my head for the past week ever since the Yellow Brick Road Challenge!
ReplyDeleteOh yes indeed, I love all fossils too.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a mantra or spell or the prayer so many layers so many times....divine!
ReplyDeletesensual , beautiful, charming,, so much more in those few words!!
ReplyDelete'we lay so many times that inside grew the outside' ~ I love this line .. I love the poem.
ReplyDeleteWonderful synecdoche between the small possibilities of love over time and this little fossil, the physical remainder of a heart. "Stone flowers for / the cover of our rest" reveals an interior to this fossil that no one but the lovers, that life, will know. Fine.
ReplyDeleteThanks, B. One wonders how many days this little creature lived before being consigned to its slow accretion. I suppose the moral is that life/love/our time may be short, but nonetheless crafted, complete, and enduring.
DeleteSo beautiful Joy. And the music is lovely too. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI saved the best for last, and indeed, this is my favorite of all the poems linked. The feelings begin small, the worm, the womb, but warmth and shelter allow what was hidden (inside) to become shown and worn easily (outside). Nothing like love to put one at one's best. Afterwards, it can't be recaptured, not really, can it? In retrospect, the remaining parts will always be smaller than the whole, the love, the glorious moment it became.
ReplyDeleteLove the song, too. I had another version on my blog a while back. Did you know it's been recorded over a hundred different times?
i love how this poem swirls and moves, inside out...like a song, a birthing, a planet spinning inside itself.
ReplyDeleteso many lovely images here, a great display of movement!
stacy lynn mar
http://warningthestars.blogspot.com/
Goodness this is beautiful...you captured the art of the image with the art of your words
ReplyDeleteAll the love kept safe in it:)
ReplyDeleteSo many beautifully descriptive words...capturing the image perfectly...love.
ReplyDelete… "your script of touch"… sigh. Words carefully chosen - really capture the mystery of the image and of relationships. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteall that is left in the end is the shell of what was but it can tell us much of what inhabitted it....the script of touch, the scroll...really like that section...to be read...and what we write in layer upon layer...
ReplyDeleteThanks, bri. Good to see you back.
Delete