Rocks are not alive; probably this is true.
But life surrounds them on a living planet,
covers them, colors them, ever so slowly digests them.
Even the crystals, all edges, vertices, flat faces.
What gives quartz its accuracy as a time keeper?
Not patience alone.
Like some people, some rocks
you’ve got to scrape hard or crack apart to find what’s inside.
The tree has been working here forty or fifty years.
But what exactly is the exchange between these roots and these rocks?
Surrounded since the beginning of the tree, or did they find a way to insinuate themselves?
Were they helped? By some necessarily quite short entity sharing the space inside?
Y’all stay with us, now.