Stone

Stone did not give up on us, we just made stone socially conscious. Many hotels and banks are still stone clad, the rich still use stone, but most of us are in the throw-away aisles of the future. This is not a class warfare poem, that war is over – we lost. Soon the poor will have no stone history, our less than epoch making lives will not outlast the crumbling era’s. Our trinkets and practical artifacts will wash away in tsunamis of time. We will leave no blue-collar archeology that can be excavated, and raised above the swallowing earth once more. Plastic and aluminum, composite drywalls, and pine struts, go to the landfill at best. In the end, rot, termites and fire are our bequeathing. In some distant past I am looking through a camera taking pictures of a far tomorrow. “Look”, I hear someone say, “there’s a nobody, he who has no stone for his grave or fame.” I agree, even this celluloid photo of me in my prime, strutting along a Jersey boardwalk, a beautiful woman on my arm; this image will also burst into flames; no doubt within, some impressive, abiding fireplace - one built of stone.