Stone. Stone. Memory.

by Karla Linn Merrifield

–in memoriam Beau Cutts, with a line from Marla Popova’s “The Paradox of Active Surrender: Jeanette Winterson on How Learning to Understand Art Transform Us”

There, a few words.
A little syntax makes
a clearing in the silence.
I place ancient stones—
Vishnu schist— on gravestones
in Jewish cemeteries, remembering.

Thus is the dormant power
of art awakened, speaking
a few words again today:
Wave. Wave. Memory.
A little context makes
a clearing in the distance.

Though lost at sea, you send on every wave
another carbon molecule of remembrance.


Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 600+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 13 books to her credit, the newest of which is her forthcoming Psyche’s Scroll, a full-length poem, published by The Poetry Box Selects. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet Redux, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.

Copyright 2018, Karla Linn Merrifield


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