Carol Shillibeer
Stone Carrier, Salish Territories When lightning touched stone there was no love there. Instead it was a kissing. Forces have no lips nor fingers & yet touch intimately, one electron recognizing another. Once met, only the stone remained, that loose, temporary knot of how-things-are; once grounded, white-sky, the sprite, unraveled in the particle sea. Even the stone has now become a pebble, the rest of the rock, mountainous, devastated with time: a mountain over time, shards, sand, its calcite dissolved. Somewhere, calcium ions, in a bone (in a hawk leg say) or riverbed racing, storm to the sea. Down below in a temporal corner, a woman. Now walking, now driving; of no consequence to the long spent sprite, nor to the pebble—even if—her leg-bone walks carrying in its marrow errant ions.
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