The Rocks I Carry With Me
Rocks in my pockets.Carrying,
always carrying them.
Rocks
in my hand’s way,
always in the way.
Rocks weighing
pulling at my pants,
hanging from my shirt.
The family gone,
those lumps of mother-hope and father-pride
and fattened disappointment, gone.
Gone now, as are the stones of my own throwing:
two sons, a daughter, two wives
thrown far, coasts and countries away.
But still, my pockets full.
The rocks not smooth from carrying,
from memory, regrets, heart splintered.
What alluvial flow
tightened and compressed them there,
collected and compacted them:
events that did not vanish with time
but hardened hard against it.
What geology of attrition and loss
left its lumps of anthracite and jet?
What phrases set in place,
solidified into granite
patterned with lines and veins.
What stabbing and contracting mounded to
the unforgettable and were kept near,
within the thigh’s front pocket?
What geography of heart
it stored in these?
What fossils am I carrying?
If there could only be a use to them
like for iron, nickel, gold or amber even,
they could be mined away, those rocks.
If they could only be useful,
they and all those years of carrying.
And if not, could they just be thrown away,
those weights inside my pockets
always in the way.
And of them, those rocks, it seems
the densest, thickest, least extractable,
the cornerstone is why the start,
and with it, why the going on?
Why now or ever,
why, why rocks at all?
Erich von Hungen is a writer from San Francisco, California. He lives under a giant Norfolk pine in a century old house between Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean. His writing has appeared in The Colorado Quarterly, The Write Launch, Versification, Green Ink Press, The Hyacinth Review, Ink Drinkers, Anti-Heroin Chic, Brave Voices and others. He is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent being “Bleeding Through: 72 Poems Of Man In Nature”. Find him on twitter @PoetryForce.
Banner: Step Forward, an art work by Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2023. Robert lives with CFSME, studied at Antioch College & worked in the experimental theatre scenes in NYC & SF, travelled a lot, returned to Canada, started up Ice Floe Press, is published lots of places incl. Otoliths, New Quarterly & The Storms Journal, & forthcoming in anthologies, Seeing in Tongues (Steel Incisors Press, 2023), Glisk and Glitter (Sidhe Press, 2023), some other books and web-based affairs, watch for them. Twitter: @frede_kenter, IG: r.f.k.vispocityshuffle & others.
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