THE JAGGED CALLIOPE

Perhaps, like so many, I at first perceived
in their solid and silent thickness
nothing more than the unbendable coldness of my own heart.

But as my essence drank from a murky well of veiled profoundness
I saw something forged so long ago, appearing to possess neither soul, nor brain,
yet infecting me with the consuming and penetrating of a flickering sensation
about how stones could be the true guardians of time's residue.

For none among the earth have truly born witness to more passage of ages
absorbing in silence what the weather of deeds rained as secrets, lives and loves
whose heartbeats had ceased in a fateful season.

And when my hand cupped these quiet sentinels of everlasting vigilance
I began to feel the tones from the layers of seconds vibrating through my pores.

They resounded in my mind with those desperate songs of sorrow, prayers of hope
as well as the suppressed lust of flight so muffled and gobbled by the wind.

It inexplicably touched my awareness like walking barefoot on a jetty of boulders
till the haunting notes of confessions unfolded in my head
with lingering and lilting vein numbing pricks of being
ensnaring and entrancing as potent as a circus's parade's melody
which is able to echo in the chords of a life time
by a single quiver of inflection.

Images kept now unfolding in their intensity
humming in my marrow about the mystical, unspoken bond
between stone and life
grateful to simply hear
the jagged calliope.