Men Talk Poetry - Dec 2002 / Jan 2003

ROCKY - For Ranny
-- © 2002 Bob Anderson
You like to pick up rocks, pointy ones,
round, flat and long ones, rocks
that are scaly and pocked, or smooth as baby-skin.
Irregular rhomboids, dotty dodecahedrons –
nature's whimsical geometry.

Your favorites are those smooth shiny black ones, grist
for some dinosaur's gizzard,
but you're always on the lookout, stopping your bike
to cull the leavings of some pushy glacier,
peculiar treasures tendered to your fingertips
from the rubble in the tubs of stones downtown.

Your apartment's a rockpile,
stone slabs upthrust from concrete, and you dwell
in one of its caves.
Your baseboards are rimmed with rocks and boulders,
each with a particular history – that one
salvaged from the Four Corners, this one gleaned from the lip
of the Grand Canyon; another,
a chip from a wayward meteorite, or a distant star.
They clump on bureau tops, cluster in trays and saucers,
lurk in closets, brood in corners, as if
reproducing themselves
to colonize an alien world.

You have an affinity for rocks, you say,
and when you used to work in your garden, sifting stones
from the soil, you felt
part of some great design, a mere molecule
in this vast, impersonal universe.

You look at me with that craggy face, your opinions
and view of the world rock-solid,
with those flinty blue eyes,
the lines around your broad smile
shifting the plates of your face.

Why is it that most of the men I love,
love rocks?
In a sly mood, I wonder, Do men
tend toward the condition of rocks?
Solid, self-contained, grist
for the finer things of this world,
moving inches over eons to remake whole continents.
Then I think of all those boys, their pockets
stuffed with rocks, flying over the face of the earth
on their Schwinn bicycles.