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Stone Children

Victoria Walters

Through soil, tree roots clutched down through fissures in

rocks. Bedding in, they got caught up in the
wellter skelter of world and flood. Few know

the mystery of how they all birthed stone,
the miracle of surfacing. Plates shi ing
against plates, marking smaller stones with journeys,

like hardened maps, borne on water, heat and
billions of years. Then we came. With minerals

in our blood and mixed it up. Made myths. It’s
possible that this stone felled Achilles,

or lodged beside the brown roots of olive trees
in old Gethsemane. It’s possible.
but maybe not. Then came the white extractors

in their vestments and told a gruesome tale.
They paid good men to drive stone children up

and down, at mes so fiercely that it nearly
broke us all. Some people think that we should

put our name upon this me as if we’re all
at fault. As if the sadness isn’t that
we’re all stone children too. Running round to

find a place to drive a golden spike in. Hard.

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