The Texture of Eternity ( Hettie’s Rock Shop)

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(i)

Hundreds of gemstones
each one singular
glimmer from the shelves
an agate’s bands of colour spiral

time coiling
within the hue
collapsing inward

towards the centre
like a hypnotist’s eye

a trance in stone?

(ii)

Long-dead fossils,

once drowned
in the crackle
of cooling lava,
or lulled
by the whispers
of ancient tides
now sealed
in shells of stone
resting beneath glass
displayed
for my longing gaze.
They still smell
of dirt,
of sea.
Fragments of a story,
pressed into
sedimentary rock
a history
caved in
by time.

(iii)

Amethyst
twilight solidified.
A crystallised wine
never poured.
It's vivid violet
seeps
into my thoughts
like dusk
filtering through stone.
Cool to the touch
like morning metal.
Sunlight finds
the amethyst,
illuminates
spiderweb fractures
and milky clouds,
ghosts of where
the crystal
grew
then stopped.
A stutter
in time.
A smooth weight
settled in my palm
sure and still.
As I press my hand
to the cool quartz,
it feels
as though the earth
breathes back.

(iv)

On every surface

geodes,
jagged edges
catch
on soft fingertips.
A chamber
with walls of quartz,
shaped
by shadow.
And when tapped,
a low echo
hollow,
secretive
the soft hum
of time
waiting.

(v)

Relics and records
of lives once lived.
Even extinction
leaves a trace.
I read
the petrified poems,
turn
the stone pages,
stare
at their frozen skeletons
and preserved footprints;
time, crystallised.
Evidence
they lived.

(vi)

I cherish the imperfections:
the individuality,

the veins
in an agate,
like an old man’s hands;
the cracks,
in a fossil,
where grief once settled.

A sacred tide

of recollections,

cascading,

a rivulet.
Eternity
has a texture.

(vii)

Last,
I see
a shard
of sea glass.
All that remains;
a ghost of green
a whisper of life
once sharp.
Now worn smooth
its memory
faded
as one day
ours will be.

That’s what I think,
as I realise:
I hold time
in my hands.
And I, too,
will be buried,
and remembered
in pieces.