“How Do Water and Stone Converse?”

We pass a dozen waterfalls

sudsing creamy leaf decay

before a glacial boulder wigged

in ferns greets us with crystals

crowned by a derelict bird’s nest.

The boulder settled in this spot

during the last, best ice age,

which settled geological debts

neither humans nor gods incurred.

You admire the fern wig more than

the erratic, but touch the stone

with reverence like mine. Knowledge

inert in granite seems remote,

but sometimes I feel it tingle

in my fingertips. We also touch

the ferns, which survived hard frost,

and the nest abandoned late

in summer when the brood matured.

You press along the path toward

the largest series of waterfalls,

a stairway a hundred yards long

with risers of a foot or two.

The brook chuckles down this flight

with a silver cast impossible

to affix in digital photos.

How do water and stone converse

when we’re not overhearing?

You insist they’re planning for

a post-human world when sighs

of evolution resume molding

specimens riper and smarter

than us. The flux in which we swim

is a medium we’ve created

with our minds rather than our hands,

and its chemistry confuses us.

“Casting Off”

While crossing the street I sink

into myself, telescoping

my legs and shriveling all over.

Traffic screams to a stop. Drivers

urge me forward or backward

or anyway out of their way.

Storefronts grimace with agony.

The clumsy light thickens. Men

in uniform try to help me,

but I slip from their paws and puddle

on the asphalt. A stretcher arrives.

Handled roughly, I pour into place.

The ambulance raves to the clinic,

where a woman in white laughs

because there’s nothing remaining

of my remains but a shadow less

convincing than the Shroud of Turin.

Meanwhile on Grove Street I stand

upright again and stagger

across the crosswalk, climb the cruel

granite post office steps, collect

my mail and resume my habits.

The self I molted, carted off

by the ambulance crew, no longer

pertains. Its damp shadow will dry

by day’s end, leaving no one

to blame for wasting volunteer time.

Shedding dysfunctional versions

of myself isn’t pretty, but

since I don’t occupy a novel

some writer left unfinished

I must devise a plot of my own

and discover a way to evolve.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Dogs Don’t Care (2022). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.