I consider now a rock
that my son found in Vermont
near a river.
This rock has certain attributes,
some of which are specific to itself, and others
which are universal to all rocks.

It is smaller than a boulder,
weighing about fifty pounds.
Its color is granitic gray.
About what might be called its equator it has a nearly white band,
rather striking, and in a way
comical.
Humor is necessary:
the heaviness of rock is serious,
requiring mitigation.

In form it is roughly elllipsoidal,
although larger at one end than the other.
It is not flat or concave on any part of its surface.
It is not about any axis symmetrical.

My eye finds pleasure in limning its shapeliness.
Its smooth and curving contours evoke desire
as the curve of a hip
longing for the soft stroke
of fingertips.

It has rock wisdom
in the igneous intelligence of its atoms,
in the locked sentience of its crystalline lattices,
its matrical materiality.

It has rock memory,
rcollecting geologic eons of Pre-Cambrian Time;
has remembrance of magma,
the shiver and quake of continents cracking,
the upheaving of mountains;
remembers the hot liquid elation of lava,
the slow-cooled languor of solidification;
remembers glaciers' rough persecution,
waters's relentless abrasion.

Now it is serene,
sitting in a garden among some phlox
and low-lying juniper,
sun warmed,
in the soft, slow rub of wind.