TEMPERMANENCE

The stairs are well polished,
Each step, in the middle,
From feet having shuffled
Past centuries of riddle.

Lichen and moss banished,
While ivy nods assent,
Muffling the steps,
Of each devotee’s decent.

The steps hollowed out,
‘Neath worn pious feet.
Where did the tops go?
Did the stones themselves retreat?

Do tiny granite particulates
Cling to feet as they are placed?
As the residues adorn
Callused soles, are both erased?

A gradual, immersive, adherence
Of grounded, powdered stones
Replacing humanity’s flaws
And thus, baptizing, atones?

Flesh placed on rock,
Rock joined to flesh,
From dust to dust,
Life and death enmeshed.

Is this how statues grow?
The ones around the grounds?
Are they so created,
Each morning, a new one found?

From souls emptied of ego
Crystalized, day upon day
By soles’ adsorption of mineral
Flushed flesh replaced with gray.

I, too, am following paths,
Of those more penitent than I,
Of those more practiced than I,
Of those more perfected than I,

With arms hidden ‘neath robes,
Hands clasped in vulnerability,
Black, white, or orange,
Color idiosyncratic conformity.

What I have come to know,
Adhering to these ways,
Is that all will surely pass,
To be followed by a newer daze.

From every beginning born,
An ending is equally spawned,
Which has been foretold
The moment each has dawned,

Though centuries lie between
A beginning’s initial spate
And its conjoined death throes
Sealing destruction’s fate.

The question is
Will I go
Gracefully into the future
My own dust will sow?

By cindy
6/15/2017