Stone

With death, after snaps at the heels
of what went before;
a line of demarcation
drives me forward;
and what I am now is both old and new in one.

These days, I am scattered as soil;
broken as weathered stone.
I am searching in nature,
for something that fits
the new shape of my heart.

I was once a winter fire;
a soft, slow rain in spring.
The flat heat of a generous summer sun;
a silvered autumn web.

Now I am as stone.

I am the broken walls of the old byres
Shadowed in memories of task and toil.
I am dark windows lit by a faint moon.
I am the gathered stories of this family home.
I am a boulder, heavy and still
On the river bed;
No tide will move me on.

I am the pulse of my own seasons now.
Owned by these fields, this untilled soil;
a caretaker, caught on the cusp of memory.

I am our days and my own in one.