Stones

someone said how unfortunate, we New Englanders 
to have all these rocks that cannot be put away that
just lie about the landscape like vagrant retirees that 
float to the surface seasonally buoyed by the hands
of the dead (who keep pushing them up from an
underworld which surely must be too crowded) that
break and bend the banana-long teeth of hay rakes
that stumble the necessary axle and bend the beloved
rod that embed curses on the roadside and hang
them in the air to dry 

but I don’t feel resentment at the sight of the irregular
heads the lichen-starred nose and bony scree dumped
as if from the wastebasket of a volcano, no I have
invited them into my house I have walked across their
backbones barefoot I have whispered prayers into the
cracked ear and oak-split skull--call me a paranoid fool
but every day I implore them: please stay a little longer
as if they might not and sail away leaving nothing but
the air and sea for us to stand on--they to whom a
second is our eon--but if they’ve listened and have
taken my supplication to heart perhaps it will be proved
a million years hence the value of praying to things
we do not believe could speak or move.
​