I struck a stone, a foot down where there should only be sand.
I will dig it out, no matter how large. I began to wonder, about stories of my childhood, Holiness preachers declaring God buried dinosaur bones to confuse the wicked, buried then down in that 6000-year-old earth. I think of God, a young boy, or a girl…. While her mother sews a magical garden of leaves, (Mother of God) this little god-child, this merry trickster crafts dinosaur bones, not bones, there were no dinosaurs, only a prank.
She buried them in soft sand of young Rocky Mountains. She named them that, Rocky Mountains. She liked the way it sounded. I like it, too. She swept her hands together like Micky Mouse in Sorcerer’s Apprentice and piled slabs of rock over them, her mother called, she forgot about them, then she was old, and had a long flowing beard, for who is to say an old woman, being god can’t have a long beard? By then, she had so much wisdom she had little room for memories.
You know this time, when she gave birth to her twins, Adam and Eve, the ones she told the story about the rib, the apple the snake and all those tales!
What she was thinking when she buried large flat stones in the fields of the New England farmers. Did she say, someday, they will dig these out and make lovely fences? Did she think of people all pretty on horses, a mess of beagles chasing some fox to its bloody red end? Did she like fox hunting? One might think so. Maybe she was more into steeple chases, with occasional broken bones and horses to be put down, no intent to kill. Unless she read Dick Francis, man loved to kill.
I will dig it out and take it to heaven and exchange it one day for a crown, no that isn’t right. Is this stone an emblem of suffering and shame? Will she look at it and smile and tell me about being a little girl in Alabama making mud pies with baby Jesus. I will stop her and say, but aren’t you his mother? I mean father, aren’t you God the Father? She will throw her old, old head back and laugh and laugh. Well no, remember my twins? Adam and Eve? Yes, but Jesus has always been my baby brother. Well except for that time he wanted to be a girl. She looks at some point far away and says softly “Lady Baby Jesus” and I stand there astounded, almost agog. “Oh, yes”, she will continue.
I will take this rock to Heaven. Maybe it is like the rock, like one of the rocks they built the theater out of, up north where dad fell through the floor. He was working on the wooden stage. He fell though, smashed his kidney, but got better later, until old when he had kidney stones. It made him think of stones on the outside the theater. Rockville Maryland, but it was a long time ago, I think he said Rockville because of stones. I could ask God when I get there, but her memory, oy vey.
Is God a Jew? No, really? Or a Muslim? Hard to imagine God a Holiness preacher, sweating, black suit, unairconditioned tabernacle, later, a fancy mega church, fat, smooth fingers, no sweat now, fake patting his dry brow. I am sweating. I will dig out the stone.
Three parts John Ashbery and one leftover bit from Rae Armantrout, like a morning biscuit shoved back in the oven, wrapped in a dish towel to be eaten later and now is later.
