Lesson From Stone, by Gail Goepfert

David & Yonatan, by Boaz Vaadia (Israel) 1998. Photo by Gail Goepfert.

Lesson From Stone

How to enter
a many-layered body--
connective tissue of bluestone,
unyielding edges, sharp,
resolute.
 
Immune to grass
or grackles. Soles planted,
bracing for plummet, the touchstone
of the stout-hearted--
survival.
 
Let nothing 
come unglued, nothing
tremble. Backbone, the keystone
of what must be
braved.

Gail Goepfert

This poem first appeared in One Art: A Journal of Poetry.
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Gail Goepfert has authored a chapbook, A Mind on Pain, 2015, a book, Tapping Roots, from Aldrich Press in 2018, and soon to be published, Get Up Said the World, 2020 from Červená Barva Press. Publications include Kudzu House, Room, Stone Boat, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Bluestem, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, SWWIM, Rogue Agent, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She’s an an associate editor at RHINO Poetry, is a Midwest poet, teacher, and photographer. More at gailgoepfert.com
 
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