photo_camera by Vincent Van Zalinge on Unsplash
Straight lines. Right angles. Symmetry.
Water has learned geometry,
stone, the split, flat flake of crystal,
tree, shrub, weed, the plane’s bisections,
to live on ends, on edges well
enough to hold the same seasons
as any soil shoots roots and seize.
And, descending through epochs, we
learn from gouged, gray walls, tilted hall
of the deep past, gauged by this stone
by stone of indifference until
disgorged, what time’s gorged itself on.
J.R. Solonche is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), To Say the Least (Dos Madres Press), For All I Know (Kelsay Books), The Time of Your Life (Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (Deerbrook Editions), Enjoy Yourself (Serving House Books), and coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.