Poem of the Week

astounded, astonied, astunned, stopped short

and turned toward stone, the moment

filling with its slow

stratified time. Standing there, your face

cratered by its gawk,

you might be the symbol signifying eon.

What are you, empty or pregnant? Somewhere

sediments accumulate on seabeds, seabeds

rear up into mountains, ammonites

fossilize into gems. Are you thinking

or being thought? Cities

as sand dunes, epics

as e-mail. Astonished

you are famous and anonymous, the border

washed out by so soft a thing as weather. Someone

inside you steps from the forest and across the beach

toward the nameless all-dissolving ocean.