Existence is a state of constant flux, as is what it means to be sacred. Poet patricia a. heisser métoyer displays this in her epic “Mastodon”. Unabashedly melancholy, “Mastodon” bravely puts faith, change, helplessness, memory, and heavy loss under the lens. It is a poem of our current age, but also of all ages, all eras.
Mastodon
Cold gray stones, O sea,
tongue without thoughts within
It’s good to play and sing
Stately haven under the hill,
long for the touch of a vanished hand
and the sound of a voice that is still.
Words break at the foot of the sea,
tender grace of a day
comes deadly will never return
A game of forfeits finished,
girls forbidden kissed beneath
a sacred bush passed away.
host sat halfway ebbed, no talk,
old honor gone dwindled
down to odd games in odd nooks.
Tired out with cutting day upon the pond,
times slips from the outer edge,
bumped the ice into several stars.
Dozed and half-awake,
taking wide and wider sweeps,
now harp on hawking geology and schism.
Settled down upon decay,
faith lost to right the world.
No anchor, none, to hold by.
God clapped, knows the gift another way,
verse a burnt epic, demanding why.
Nothing new, nothing, that truth
looks freshest in the day.
God mints reasons: ask.
Pleased enough in heroic times,
nature brings the Mastodon remodeled models.
Faint Homeric echoes, nothing worth,
Mere chaff and draff are much better burnt.
Earth keeps a thing. Its use will come,
like a horse that hears the hay bin open,
pricked ears remember
prelude of disparagement, read,
mouthing out hollow, deep-chested,
mournful music plays.
Originally posted at The Dew Drop
