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| Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons A Venice Canal, 1868/Eugenio Lucas Velazquez (1817-1870) Public Domain |
Canaliculi
What secrets bridge the span as they stand, bestridden
across the damp, ancient sandstone façade?
While the view may appear handsome, it is still forbidden,
since its face, its veneer, remains impenetrable and
unsolvable.
Perhaps, in the aged mortar, someone slid in
a secret message or a cipher,
locked within the seams because that person didn’t
want the significance known by man or god,
and so, for all eternity, it shall remain hidden.
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Notes: The form is Magic 9, a very fun, addicting form. It was recently featured at Poetic Asides, as the latest in their Forms Challenges. The poem was inspired by Sepia Saturday's picture prompt:
I smiled on reading the poem about things unseen and unknown locked forever within the stone. In 1964 my family was laying the foundation for a cabin we intended to build. We spent the summer putting together the wooden forms into which cement would be poured. On the appointed day the cement trucks came - one every 20 minutes. My brother & sisters & I, together with our Mom, Dad, & grandmother, chunked long stick-like polls up & down in the cement to get rid of air bubbles in the hardening cement. Later that evening as the sun was setting the last redwood sill was laid in place & we began to gather up tools & things noting that Dad's best hammer was missing; there was a work glove missing its mate; one of the chunking stick-poles was rather shorter than it should have been; & a few other things. Forever lost in the cabin's foundation? They might have been except for reasons too long to explain here, the cabin was never built, the land was bought by the state & the foundation was eventually removed. Who has Dad's good hammer, a single glove, a piece of wooden pole, & whatever else? We'll never know. It was a grand adventure while it lasted, though. Memories are all that remain, but they still make us smile.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. What a very interesting story. If you write prose, I think you have the genesis of a really cool story.
ReplyDeleteFun to read, and I admire your talent turning words into verse. I also enjoyed hearing about Gail's foundation with objects hidden in it! Wonder where all the Sepians are this week!
ReplyDeleteI wondered that myself. Thanks for your kind words!
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