Not Only Forms

Not long since, we combed
the shoreline of this western foreland
among the jetsam of weather, tide
and all things that diminish
through the hourglass of air,

trying for purchase
on the sliding stones, these difficult
peninsular relics
rounded bones
and pounded forms
of the earth’s violent slow decay –

a place where crows come in their black
twilight clusters
for raucous scouring
and picking over;

hammer in hand, mind pacing,
you fossicked for spoors
of what’s locked, original,

oldest lithographs
of what brought us here
to the mad pebble-dashed hurtle
of this planet

always the continuing
Preamble of form: