A Stone’s Story
I was a hunk
of rock you could barely
lift without grunting.
Remember that hot beam glaring
from my core? I shivered
a fever you’d give your right hand
to feel. That white degree.
I pulsed through the earth’s sharp
shell, or did I plunge
from a wrathful sky?
No matter.
It’s the story that counts.
I was all you’d expect
from a god, not the dull stone
you think you see.
That wasn’t me, folded
into the warm row of a tilled field,
the comfort of worms as neighbors.
Not me, spending decades mired
in mud, scored by the blade
of a brainless plow.
*
Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emerita (PA), 2016 Winner of Main Street Voices (PA), and second place winner in the 2023 Crossroads Contest (MD). Latest publications include Gargoyle, Gyroscope, One Art, River Heron Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig. Her collection, Broken Umbrellas, was published by Kelsay Books. Jane is Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. See www.janeednamohler.com for more information.
