3
" SPECULATION
In the coolness here I care
Not for the down-pressed noises overhead,
I hear in my pearly bone the wear
Of marble under the rain; nothing is truly dead,
There is only the wearing away,
The changing of means. Nor eyes I have
To tell how in the summer the mourning dove
Rocks on the hemlock’s arm, nor ears to rend
The sad regretful mind
With the call of the horned lark.
I lie so still that the earth around me
Shakes with the weight of day;
I do not mind if the vase
Holds decomposed cut flowers, or if they send
One of their kind to tidy up. Such play
I have no memories of,
Nor of the fire-bush flowers, or the bark
Of the rough pine where the crows
With their great haw and flap
Circle in kinned excitement when a wind blows.
I am kin with none of these,
Nor even wed to the yellowing silk that splits;
My sensitive bones, which dreaded,
As all the living do, the dead,
Wait for some unappointed pattern. The wits
Of countless centuries dry in my skull and overhead
I do not heed the first rain out of winter,
Nor do I care what they have planted. At my center
The bone glistens; of wondrous bones I am made;
And alone shine in a phosphorous glow,
So, in this little plot where I am laid. "
― Ruth Stone , Essential Ruth Stone
8
" AND SO FORTH
Someone, or a group of someones,
Has gone to consider the strange altered behavior
Of penguins along the tip of south America.
It’s a film and reporting thing to do.
And someone like me thinks upon it.
Here in darkest Binghamton, I think of the plight of penguins
In the rapidly changing climate
Of the oceans and polar regions.
…as an Adelie penguin becomes my own penguin,
Inside my skull, even its oil-coated sleek body
That stands and waddles toward its own nest,
Somewhere among the million other nests,
And its own chick crying out
Among the million others, is distinctive.
Can I hope the great ear of the universe
Is pressed to the wall of space and hears me,
Its own chick peeping? Over here in this galaxy,
This little freight of penguins
And so forth? "
― Ruth Stone , Essential Ruth Stone
10
" MY MOTHER’S PHLOX
To send this to you toward the end of summer,
I was forced to rebuild my desktop.
Not in the old-fashioned way,
With saw and eye laid alongside the board
With some rue in my fingers,
But I wanted to create phlox.
Although, god knows, it can’t be done
In three dimensions, as the earth
Has so easily done it, but who can compete
With the earth? No, I wanted only the words
And they have lost themselves in the fields
Or along the gravel road. It’s just as well.
(Floks) n. pl. various plants of the genus Phlox,
Having opposite leaves and flowers,
With variously colored salverform corolla.
Over the years the phlox have spread
Even into the fields beyond the barn,
Into the edge of the woods, inventions
Of themselves in endless designs…
They exhale their faint perfume summer after summer,
And summer after summer it was my nightlong
Intoxicant. It was my potion, my ragged butterfly,
My faulty memory of my mother
Who was the same age then, as I am now.
As then, I was the same age you are now,
When my mother planted these phlox in my garden.
I’m sending them to you by UPS,
Wrapped in plastic in a proper box.
Take them out and stick them in water;
Dig a good bed and spread the roots.
They need almost no care.
They cast their seed; they thrive on neglect.
Later, they may change like the faces you love,
Ravaged and ravishing from year to year. "
― Ruth Stone , Essential Ruth Stone
