LIMESTONE GHAZAL
My windowsill’s lined with fossils, whorled limestone
remnants of ancient seas, lost bodies now limestone.
I’ve planted turmeric and borage, mustard and margiolds.
Where do I pray my name takes root in time? Stone.
The beauty of rocks is all weight and shape,
a poetry of heft. Stevens! I also cry, “Stanza my stone.”
I spend all morning arranging words, and all they leave
is a memory fainter than water on hot, dry stone.
My mother calls. Her friend next door was evicted,
had to move to a trailer, to another county—Limestone.
In my dream, I’m trying to call home
but every number yields another dial tone.
Ammonite, echinoid, gastropod—you had no name
alive in your sea, only now when you are limestone.
