The naked rock the mason
chiseled and shaped
rambles around the acreage
of a mansion that’s been handed down.
After him came ivy, then lichen,
and a sycamore’s shade.
Atop this ancient altar now sits
a boy testing it heel by heel.
All through the mythical summer
he’ll worship there and they’ll keep coming:
satyrs, unicorns, wizards,
out of the stone’s colors,
out of what the mason chopped,
out of stories untold.
They’ll keep coming and dazzle the child
into unbroken shadows of forgetting.