MILKY QUARTZ

High-gloss stones salt the fields and woods

With opaque or translucent facets 

In sun or shade. 

Some are too large to dig out of the earth,

Others are lying on the surface as if abandoned,

Common rocks in continental crusts.

I gather them as if they were a harvest,

I make piles of them as if I were building cairns,

Shapeless monuments to those scattered and adrift

In clay or dirt,

Uncovered by wind and rain, their crystals stained,

Their cast-away light beckoning

Toward the immutable remains of cold, molten magma

Stacked along the sides of the fields and woods

For deer and bear to disburse, for seedlings to displace,

For me to rediscover after the dogwoods have bloomed,

The hay has been cut, the leaves have fallen,

And snow covers the earth. 

© cmheuer, 2016