SOURCING STONES

SOURCING STONES

            for Elise          

                                                                                                                          

Stones from the Hebrew Bible

track patterns in sand. Eavan Boland,

dead in Ireland. I read her poems

after a bicycle ride. She writes in

Quarantine about a man and woman

living and dying in the year 1847.

How they lived together

in the worst year. The worst year

for all, she reminds us, can be proved

in darkness. And so it happens

again in our time, a dark season.

We didn't know who was in the room

when the stars came out, young

immigrants telling stories.

Twenty years later we find

out each of us was present.

We were telling the same story.

Jim Bodeen

4 May 2020