That Stone Confounds Us

Poetry by Tod Robbins

Why do we trap you in a box?

As if you were ever held by walls in life!

This capsule is an affront

To the tabernacle of flesh,

Merely practical to deposit your remains.

I will not be buried in a tiny home

for my bones.

Instead

Place my stiffness in raw earth and then a stone.

To remember me is to return me to my Mother,

To rest a short while with the worms and beetles,

God’s lilies as my crown.

That stone confounds us

We, the postmodern,

see the chocolate swirls

on geologic time,

not what once showed on its face.

Eons and ages passed until

farm folk held that smooth stone

near fields, forests, wells, and mines.

That stone confounds us,

discomposes our art,

stuns our texts,

our present.