Speculation

In the coolness here I care

Not for the down-pressed noises overhead,

I hear in my pearly bone the wear

Of marble under the rain; nothing is truly dead,

There is only the wearing away,

The changing of means. Nor eyes I have

To tell how in the summer the mourning dove

Rocks on the hemlock’s arm, nor ears to rend

The sad regretful mind

With the call of the horned lark.

I lie so still that the earth around me

Shakes with the weight of day;

I do not mind if the vase

Holds decomposed cut flowers, or if they send

One of their kind to tidy up. Such play

I have no memories of,

Nor of the fire-bush flowers, or the bark

Of the rough pine where the crows

With their great haw and flap

Circle in kinned excitement when a wind blows.

I am kin with none of these,

Nor even wed to the yellowing silk that splits;

My sensitive bones, which dreaded,

As all the living do, the dead,

Wait for some unappointed pattern. The wits

Of countless centuries dry in my skull and overhead

I do not heed the first rain out of winter,

Nor do I care what they have planted. At my center

The bone glistens; of wondrous bones I am made;

And alone shine in a phosphorous glow,

So, in this little plot where I am laid.

Copyright Credit: Ruth Stone, “Speculation” from Simplicity. Copyright © 1995 by Ruth Stone. Reprinted with the permission of Paris Press, Inc.

Source: In An Iridescent Time (1959)