Eric Barstad - the half movement of stone

(Pyrrha & Deucalion)

                    "…these figures of men and their shapes
                    Will glisten again with motion…"
                                                         –Wallace Stevens

The taste of dirt. Salt soil-caked
To our lips.

The smell of dying fish.

And who, then, are these two, dry, veiled,
walking parallel, and parallel, tossing
—with the less-strength of age—our mother's
bones onto the ground, this ground filling
our mouths?

The sound of their soft slow steps
erases the retreating thunder;
their synchronous steps: as love, as their love
used to be.
               Earlier days: his wrist
brushing her nipple in sleep, years
ago, before water's time.  This
he thinks of now, osseous stones
—discarded like memories—dropping
behind him.

               Behind her: dust solidifying in time
with the falling rocks, the repetition sex-like,
but not.  (Her palm against his chest.
A smoother palm, a harder chest.)

She smiles her grey smile,
glances at him and back at us: children,
our mouths still forming in the mud,
and our dusty marrow.