For Sanderson

I wasn’t surprised when you told me 
that stones have souls. Your geologic 
religion. I feel it at the beach,
where the greatest force is the quiet weight 
of the moon. Where landslides meet
the smooth erosion of shore. 

What amazed me was the ease
of your granite conversations. How each
fragment of cooled magma had a voice.
Wise response to questions that comprise 
a human life: mica, agate, quartz.

You seemed to forget I was there;
the sea, that day, so full of phrases.
The dying exhalation of postulated stars.
Although, at times, I too detected the roar.

You knelt to claim the perfect heft.
Totem to carry home, you told me, to build on, 
the way masons created cathedrals, symmetries 
to house the idea of something holier than themselves.

Then you asked me, Did you know 
they used to force convicts to quarry their own 
prisons? Even in the snow, their bone skin
rubbed raw, they made a place 
for the sound of the loneliest god.