STONE STORIES by D.J. Clarke

Do you see that blasted boulder on the ridge?
That is the shape of an abandoned girl,
the flat rock by her side the child she bore a man
who never returned, hunched silent as a little
tomb. Go place your hand against its grain –
you can perhaps still feel the ghosts of sighs.
And then, not far from there, go put your feet
in holes the devil’s mare cut in the rock
with her molten hooves, when they chased her master out of
the village, those pious folk. Or, in the churchyard,
run a hand over the lichen mottle of that rounded stone
they say is a demon, scourged from the church and petrified for
the sin of trying to sex the angels by peeking
under their frocks. Last, you should visit the cave
where a witch still cowers, turned to stone the colour
of cattle-carcass fat, yellow like the hell-dog
curled at her feet on the edge of their brackish pool.
You know, we have these stones to tell us that
there are some things that cannot forget themselves –
some things just marking time as the centuries
edge past. One day, perhaps, these surfaces will crack,
and the underworld creatures and jilted girls will tumble
out across the world.