The Stone-Ring
A lone stone-ring stands broken
under a bare sky. A barren field,
full with shrubs, is swallowing up its foundations.
Nature creeps in, heeding the call of time,
and dares to drag it down into the earth.
Mice come there to make shelter,
crows land to pick at its mossy coat.
Neither knew the old-ones, those who knew
this ring’s duty, those whose histories
and ideas imbued it with a sense of purpose.
A faded ring, with aging rocks,
it contains little, gives few clues
to the academic, those with ambition
far grander than the footnotes of history.
So human interest has left it behind.
So the stone-ring calls out to the sky:
‘Where went the folk who heard our voices?
Where went those who sought our stories?
Where went the priests, the prayer-givers?
Where went the worship that guided us?’
A lonely wanderer comes, to wonder,
to feel the mystery of these missed stones,
sharing their pity with this silent gathering,
though hearing nothing, but the wind-hallows
that whistle as they wind about the rocks.
Both search for meaning, where meaning is lost,
both remain shadows, or shells of the past,
both wait to be worn by the winds of time,
to be swept to the sky, or to sink to the earth,
to let go of their loyalties, to be lost.
