from the stones
DAVID McLEAN
from the stones runs water rehearsing winter,
and running slower till it gets to be temporary
stone, an arrogant eternity of ice
to freeze fingers to the pump
and leave skin as tribute to the imps of water
and the sanctity of matter, water and blood
for them, the little devils of chance
and facticity. they are not sentient, not mystic,
here where they only live in poems about an adverse
world turning, and people becoming things
they never meant to be, like dead or happy
and nothing forever until the night breaks,
and we lie eternity motionless in the grave,
dead and wide awake