Omphalos

Stone is a millenia-hardened structure, 

yet the shell of your ear is translucent in the waxy light of dawn.

Through the chipped-out interstices of our acquaintance, 

outside of the barns of our youth, 

cut through with straw and wood and plaster 

and all those things less sturdy than stone,

the slate shifts and cracks, 

slides past itself like the eternal shifting of tectonics. 

Stone exists to be carved, 

forged, statuated,

and you gleam, polished and bright,

emergent from the marbled block

a Michelangelic creation,

vulnerable to the smudge of my fingertips. 

I keep my hand back, tucked into my pocket of fabric,

flimsy in the shadow of your forthrightness.

But you are no Galatea, 

immobilized by your exit from stone,

your passion not yet contained, 

caught in a single moment.

I would not condemn you to Galatea, 

pedestallic and still and unknown.