Here’s a poem returning to my blog from October 2023.

“The Rock is Me” was originally titled “The Dust is Me” and still is that poem save the last line where I had, “time’s the rock, the dust is me.”

I still am not sure that this is the right ending. I’m also not sure I love this poem. I experimented with rhyme, using ABAB for each stanza. It’s experimentation because except for some of the kid’s poems I have written, I have not done this.

The last line leaned a bit into Emily Dickinson’s poems being a bit cryptic and tighter than the other lines.

It’s possible this poem would be better with only two or three stanzas. In fact, I’m sure it would.

At this point though, it is what it is. I doubt that it will make it into the poetry book I’m working on, though to say I’m working on it is a bit overstated.

Unless that poem takes the form of my poetry evolving into the style I have today. That might be interesting with commentary of this sort and a picture or two thrown in.

I still feel the poem is interesting, which for me is a way to say it’s good, or good-ish. It is very much me from two and a half years ago, my poems more explicit, less convoluted in the twisted way I’ve been writing.

You can see such twisting in the poem “What It Is” which was the last poem in the original format of this blog where I wrote roughly two poems a week and posted them as soon as they were finished.

This system has now produced six poems in two weeks, all of them run through multiple drafts, all of them un-posted. These poems, for my email subscribers, may, at some point, arrive quietly in an email.

Or, if I don’t figure out how to accomplish what seems so simple, not.

Posting return poems works out well for me, actually. I have failed to build a simple archive system here to find my old poems, which number in the hundreds now after almost three years.

If you want to browse through them, the links at the top of the page group them. The Poetry link gets you a chance to browse through all of the poems.

Wrapping up, I have 107 subscribers! My wife gave me an insight the few times that I lamented having so few people following the blog, her simple question being, “Why do you want more followers?”

Well, huh. I’m not sure. Vanity? A belief that my poetry might help someone, somewhere get through something difficult?

I’m thankful for the quality of my audience over the quantity of my audience.

So thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I really appreciate it. Please consider leaving a comment.

Here’s a bot-friendly version of the poem:

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The dust is me

I took a piece of sandpaper
one hundred twenty grit
and sanded down a rock I found
along a hike I did.

On every side I took my time
until it took the light
and turned it back into my eye
so much I felt I did.

Time takes longer when it tries
to polish random rocks
to punish them with sand and dirt
and grind them such and such.

I wonder at time’s patience
and at my constant rush
to rub away the rough to find
some beauty from the dust.

That dust itself’s as likely rich
with light my eye can’t see
at powers of ten much greater,
time’s the dust, the rock is me. 

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