Genesis According to Stone

by BRIGIT TRUEX

“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;”
—Alexander Pope, 1733

In the beginning was fire
and rock forged of stars, glittering with furious

memory of the womb that expelled it. Articulate
stone dissolved to liquid, seeping ochre,

cyan, rust from black crystal veins.
And the earth was formed and life emerged

and it was good. But the ground buckled, cast
its glassy ash into the sky, pressing stem and stalk

into itself. The waters rose, layered themselves
over the slow-footed saurian, the hydra-headed snail.

At last the seas withdrew to their bounds,
trailing glyph of wave, white arc of shell

embedded in stepped stone walls.
At their feet, archaic volumes scattered,

their rock-pages open to the many-faced moon,
the traveling sun.

Finally, one who spoke stone arrived.
She recorded creation’s gospel

without cipher or alphabet. Striking rock
to rock-face, she traced her testimony,

marveling at what she saw each day,
or perhaps just that once, when mist was

an untamed cloud come low, the valley of flowers
unclassified, simply wild with abandon.