And It Is Written

half moon reflecting

And It Is Written: 

                The

Least Among Them:  

                Small Stones

Her one worried memory at hands she takes

the natural breaks in stones and places

them here here edge to middle to make

a solid mobile without a string.  Once,

above her son’s crib, she turned the wings

of the music box and watched the plush

toys twirl in the absence of his nap in

the absence of him then and ever after.

She’ll never again say that nothing’s

solid.  Not the water we boil soon solid cold

in the dog’s water bowl, not the stall

in the barn where in a different spring the un-

restrained body of the bull surging into his yearn

not the hole in the stall wall all bawl spit and horn

not the lawn on an October morning her

hoarfrost her rough tongue not the rocking

chair where she sang her baby her baby after

tomato picking before not after the frost after

apples after a sudden no breath at all and never

again and dust she comes to this and that

place where she’d've taken her baby she follows

the natural breaks and makes his grave day

after day because going up like the swell

of breath is only momentary coming down

six months old or twenty two or seventy

nine why this making is in the blood and stone

erecting it in the middle of a girl’s earthwomb

only eventually it all comes down what hour

what day the breaking when the boy’s mobile

wound up and when it wound down