by Jeff Howard.
In the playground,
a small sea of grass and child voices,
I circulate in slow eddies
and drift, helpless,
in a larger pattern of green
too slow for the eye to see,
until at last, helpless, I reach
the stacked-rock wall that rings the sea.
My eye settles there,
my hand settles there,
on the calm dense mass of fossil vertebrae.
The weight of long time drifts down on me,
sensuously surrounds me,
cradles me in sedimentary arms,
answering each memory,
atom for atom,
turning my days to limestone.