Gravel

Gravel garden walk--
Crunchy thing--
Pensive sound stirring
History, intrigue, power.
Gold, any gold under flowers?
Nitric acid would tell if
I had any.
Well, arsenic?
Reinsch test misreads
Its own copper gauze
Which contains what it tests for.
Marsh test is accurate
Nine times out of ten.
I haven't the knack
But then, how to tell if
These rocks are backfill
Over poisoned royalty?
This was greed, grief.
This was bone,
Committed to crystal lattice
In a stone.
Or could this be a bug
Breaking into a water drop?
Who am I, then, where stone stops?
Who cares.
I have worked hard on this who,
Don't want it petrified
In poisons under tombs, menhirs,
Pyramids, abbeys, stuff formed
Of so much rock
I'm surprised any is
Left over for my
Gravel garden walk.

Janus Before Seven

Time to sit on a log
And be spellbound
In pearl early light
Turning in low fog.
White tendrils curl
Up from earth,
Ghosts churning
White over winter
Fields.
Not a sound.
How to consume
This crop, this yield?
Sit on a log, be
Spellbound.