Quartz

In white stones

That can be palmed in the ascent

to shift fortune, or the perception of it

Beneath the shadows of black cloth

That roll through mentality

In the palace of a king

The shards of self are made whole

What stays are the vignettes

In the aviary of an emperor

We are honored, in our way

As the carpets of lichen reach across every surface

The tracks of cloven animals trampled the land

With such distinction

the memory lives in the soil

Like approaching thunder.

crest the landslide

Become the avalanche

my soul is the cactus that summit

and the broken bones in the gorge below.

And all of the rawness,

that lingers like the dust of another era

How the machinery of man has failed us

In the theaters of choosing

They lay as the bones of great pasts

Strewn about the landscape as the wreckage of other mindframes.

It is in the broken stones we are made immortal.

In the shedding power

We are but a note in the chorus of spring.