Ode to the River Stone

*******

"Dumb as a bag full..."

of you--

at least, that's what they say.

Is it true?

I wonder sometimes--

if wisdom comes with age,

does insight live in you?

Your years are as numerous

as the grains of sand that your broken parts

one day become.

You endure the storms in silence.

Your only armor--

yourself--

ever-changing

as you shed the weakest parts

of yourself.

Never do you weep

or plead your case,

begging the elements to cease.

No,

but ever onward you roll,

only occasionally

bonding to other versions

of what you could have been,

sometimes weaker bits--

a buffer to shield you

from losing more of yourself,

and other times,

you are the weaker one,

grabbed ahold of by the larger, stronger

versions of what you could have been

but never thought to wish you were.

They pull you along

a little farther downstream, downhill,

forward in time.

You lose parts of yourself to the movement,

to the ever-changing and progressing,

never-yielding or slowing,

always-eroding

passage of time.

But you never change your core.

Your makeup remains the same,

forged in fire and pressure,

carried along by currents,

knocked about by those you might have been--

some stronger, some weaker,

some older, some younger.

Violently, you bash into each other,

battles fought not with each other,

but against nature,

against time and pressure.

And so you become polished,

rounded where there once was a sharp edge,

smooth where once there was a crack,

never in control of your shape or your journey,

but never losing the core

of yourself.

True to your makeup you remain--

Just a rock--

forged in fire and pressure--

a testament to the ever-changing and progressing,

never-yielding or slowing,

always-eroding

passage of time.

And yet here you rest--

in the palm of my hand.

Smoother than my skin,

harder than my bones,

your years as numerous as the specks of dust

that form my makeup,

And I wonder...

"what insights might I gain

from this small rolling stone?"

*******

Art & Words © Lena Folkert, 2023. All rights reserved.