My Brother Ivan Gave Me a Large Chunk of Petrified (Crystallized) Wood Decades Ago
As eons pass, some things become serene
In death and nearly everlasting in
Their beauty. Logs condemned to mud come clean
In loveliness. The minerals that win
Inside their cells replace destruction with
A lustrous presence that no tree could dream,
A petrifying gorgeousness like myth,
A deathless holiness in its extreme.
The chambered nautiloid is pressed beneath
Photo by Roger Weller
Four hundred million years of saving slime
And is transmogrified within its sheath
To shapeliness of glamor by slow time.
Who knows what each man’s would might turn
