The Artwork: Stalactites
The Poem: Stalactites (A Carbon Cycle)
The tomb of yourself
contains 8 stalactites
hanging like hollow bats
haunting the space.
What began as rainwater
free flowing from the sky
became a losing stream,
funneled through generations of stone
dissolving ancestral shells into mineral-laden beads of water
dripping down into darkness, depositing their heavy cargo
as pillars of thought and limestone beliefs
that seemed immovable
and immutable.
Later, stone is revealed
as fragile as a soda straw
one crack to show
it has nothing to hold.
For a time,
all you can see are the hollow skeletons
in the graveyard of your being.
But, don’t you know
while water carries death,
death herself carries new life,
each taking each other where
they’re needed next.
This isn’t a tomb, it’s a museum:
a calcite map of your heart
of everything you have carried
until now.