It's Still Life

The featured image is used with the kind permission of Nick (Spira) who holds all rights.

Meteora: Remains

I. Passing Through Memory

Not mountain.
Silt.
Water’s slow thoughtfulness.

The sea remembers me
better than the sky.

Shell.
Darkness.
Weight.

Pressure as language.

I have worn the shape of rivers
longer than rivers
have worn names.

A fish once passed through me.
A root.
The shadow of a cloud.

Anima mundi.
None remain —
All remain.

Rain writes its ink
downward.
Again.
And again.
Again.

I do not keep memory.
I am memory.

The salt of vanished seas
still turns through sleeping layers.

The bones of creatures
with no word
for bone.

Cloud-shadow.
Sun-shadow.
Wing-shadow.

Something falls from the sky.
Something rises from the earth.
Between them, lichen dreams.

A child touches my face
a thousand years
before his birth.

Do not ask what I have seen.
Ask instead
what remains visible
after seeing.

Water.
Pressure.
Time folding into deeper time.

And beneath that
the first tide,
still arriving.

II. The Brief Astonishment

They arrive carrying their gods.

Their maps.
Names.
Something to place
against the silence.

The stone offers nothing.
No answers.
No objections.

Only weather.
Only time.

Cloud.
Sun.
Shadow.

A child presses his hand
against the rock
certain
he is touching it.

Years later
the stone remains,
holding the shape
of neither hand
nor certainty.

They leave carrying silence
but the stone keeps

the weight.

III. Quiet Certainty

People arrive carrying explanations.

Gods.
Faith.
Stories.

The certainty that this place
means something more,

but the rock says nothing.

Cloud.
Sun.
Shadow.

A hawk turns.

Someone photographs eternity.
Someone else prays.

The stone remains unmoved,
and by evening
everyone leaves

taking their meanings
with them.

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