Geiger Counter

I’m flummoxed by poetry in some ways, but lines appear every once in a while. I texted a poet friend who said, “Why do these lines come to us?!”

It’s probably like a song, but a fragment of something you’ve never heard before. They’re usually pure emotion or feeling, sentiment. I don’t know a lot about craft of them. I’m learning, though to write them down instead of ignoring them. They’re usually about some kind of grief.

This one has some geographic feel, and I could go deeper with the stone part of it, but we talked about poetry being an emotional geiger counter. That feels apt for this. It woke me up this morning, so I thought I’d share it.

There is no healing now

Or mending, hope

Or tunnels with light.

There is no salve

Or salvation.

There is a crash,

A stone, a miss,

Absence too dark to be filled.

A flood, a storm

With love outside and

Nothing else let in.

It will be what it is and time

May sand its edges

The crack will stand

With no repair.

When the earth moves,

Final.