Stonehenge
1.
We circle the path
around these stony bones,
these great granite teeth
fallen from the sky's mouth,
searching for what's been lost,
and I spy an angel reclining
on one of the lintels,
winking at me as Jonah might
from the barren ribs of a whale picked clean.
Bones big and blue as whales, each one,
set down in a ring
as if they were toys
abandoned mid-play
by a God
in the fitfulness
of His childhood.
2.
The angel spins midair like a wheel
and purrs as I hold a phone up to my ear,
and let the story of these blue stones,
being dragged from the sea across Salisbury Plain,
enter me like a wave.
3.
Stones from the Preseli Mountains in Wales
where they say people sing just like angels.
Stones too big to be moved and quarried by hand.
Maybe they had to sing them up
out of the earth and into the boats.
4.
Preseli reminds me of Elvis
with his white teeth
and that perfect Welshman's face.
His kin must have come,
from the same place as these stones,
all the way to Memphis
so he could wear blue suede shoes
and sing us away from stepping on them.
5.
Poor Elvis adrift on a sea of worship
that couldn't help but drown him.
Elvis an idol wounded to the quick.
A God in the throes of adolescence,
his essence lost along with his innocence,
held captive at Graceland.
The angel nods and fizzles away
like a blues riff on the air,
leaving me nostalgic for
this skeletal Leviathan,
fossil of grit and grace,
this outdoor cathedral of a place.
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