Lithic Psalter
It seeps like the silt in a drowned estuary, A slow, suffocating deposition of clay; It turns every hope to a grim reliquary, And washes the last trace of color away. It weighs like the basalt—an iron-bound pressure, The petrified burden of wood turned to stone; A dark, mathematical metric of measure, That tallies the marrow and claims it its own. It clings like the lichen on crumbling arches, A grey, consecrating embrace of decay; A silent, arachnid corruption that marches To drink the last heat of the dying of day. The veins are an aqueduct—broken and hollow, Where cold mineral waters stagnate and pool; Where the ghost of the heartbeat is made to follow, The iron-clad silence that governs as rule. It sits like a fossil, a skeletal token, Imbedded in limestone, a shadow refined; The monument left when the axis is broken— The sacred remainder grief leaves behind.
Brother, what can I say? Pure elegance.
Pain as something that solidifies over time like geological matter, without explicitly referring to mind or trauma, is a sophisticated choice. An emotion that becomes something ordinary and permanent. The coherence is extremely high; you never slip into naming what is already being named through the geological metaphor. A carefully controlled, refined lexicon that never drifts elsewhere. It reads like Victorian poetry with modern, polished structure, a blend of styles that work well together, and the imagery is physical. A metaphysical and symbolic poem that manages to convey the rigidity of pain that does not move and becomes calcified.
And then the rhymes. The rhymes.
Well done, brother. As always, perfect.
You made grief feel… tangible. Rather than describing loss directly, you give it weight, texture, and permanence through images drawn from the natural world. Another beautiful piece my friend.