Child's Park Stones

In sunless air, under pines Green to the point of blackness, some Founding father set these lobed, warped stones To loom in the leaf-filtered gloom Black as the charred knuckle-bones Of a giant or extinct Animal, come from another Age, another planet surely. Flanked By the orange and fuchsia bonfire Of azaleas, sacrosanct These stones guard a dark repose And keep their shapes intact while sun Alters shadows of rose and iris —- Long, short, long —- in the lit garden And kindles a day's-end blaze Colored to dull the pigment Of azaleas, yet burnt out Quick as they. To follow the light's tint And intensity by midnight By noon and throughout the brunt Of various weathers is To know the still heart of the stones: Stones that take the whole summer to lose Their dream of the winter's cold; stones Warming at core only as Frost forms. No man's crowbar could Uproot them: their beards are ever- Green. Nor do they, once in a hundred Years, go down to drink the river: No thirst disturbs a stone's bed.