Memory of Stones

Slow as a fault line

grows the memory of stones;

they recall the shift

of the rumbling mountain

and the sleep of the lost sea.

The growth of the mountain seems infinitesimally slow; the orogeny takes place one millimeter at a time. Then the sudden seizure of activity -- an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, a shift in the tectonic plates. There are fault lines at the foot of Blanca, waiting to open. The plates may not shift until long after I'm gone.

I think about everything the stones have seen, how long they've waited to take the form they have, how they're continually being shaped by the wind, and I don't feel so dissatisfied with my own slow progress.