Rousted from buxom dreams, hunched like a tramp, she crept
along the thin knife’s edge, then curled, petal-soft, averting pursuit.
A filament of prescience, nothing more than acknowledgment.
Heat, pressure and tectonic stress transform recurrent desire
in volcanic margins, ripple my surface, translucent and cloudy,
metamorphic rock melted, recrystallized. Gone the smooth
mantle. We are to be transformed by life, amalgamated with stones
loosed around us, that which claws its way to the surface. Banded agate
bends light, gifts us color. Don’t set me unhandled as jewels in a tiara.
Roughen me, alter and tumble me, until I am no more.