Margaret Lloyd
White Limestone
Just before sleep the words
Hagia Sophia come to me.
Puzzled, I read the next day
about Istanbul’s basilica,
its white marble, white limestone,
the meaning of its name: holy wisdom.
Days earlier I had picked up
a piece of limestone broken from an old
headstone at the end of the street.
I vaguely looked around
for the grave it came from,
then took it home. Now I’ll never
come to the end of it: this stolen stone.
A century of weather had turned
its outside a mottled black.
But broken open as I found it,
stark white blinded me—
an eternal frozen sea.
Granodiorite
Rock on top of the world
from the bottom of the world
magma cooling slowly
forming ridges and places
where hands can grasp
feet balance as I climb and where
I rest my face against cool stone
to avoid the dizzying sky
the plateau of it comforts me
as I scale the first mountain
in the dawn of the first world
my heart does not grow faint
but really it’s a small piece of rock
broken open and exposed
held in my hand
and I am intimate with it
taking in the inner secret part
I know something
moving it back and forth
mica catches light
here is not reduction
but amplification
I have to get to it slowly
look and hold and imagine
as I have to be seen and held
turned around and loved
maybe for a long time.
Margaret Lloyd was born in Liverpool, England, of Welsh parents, and grew up in a Welsh immigrant community in central New York State. She has published four poetry collections and a book on William Carlos Williams’ poem Paterson. In 2017, she won a Welsh Books Council Grant which supported the publication by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch of Travelling on My Own Errands: Voices of Women from The Mabinogi. Margaret’s poetry honors include a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, fellowships to Breadloaf and to Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and a writing residency at Yaddo. In addition to Poetry East, she has also published in journals such as AGNI, Willow Springs, New England Review, and Poetry Wales. More information can be found on her website: www.margaretlloyd.net.
Stone Quarterly 