Monday Poem: Ritual

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

These poems are also posted to ABCTales.

Ritual

Are these the hands that shaped these times from soil,

and took each precious stone down to the sea

to wash it, bring it back, arrange like shapes

that will become significant and pure?

But we have been to this place once before

and these are memories we placed up here,

reminding us of times and days and dreams

of how to move through landscapes like this one,

and how the sea can wash us both so clean,

removing stains of history and of loss.