by Madeleine Roberts

When the rocks cried out for weeping 

I knelt to the ground and wept. 

This sphere is too great for cupped hands  

like water at the fountainhead 

overflowing, baptism of reflections. 

I am quiet multitudes past  

the sum of my fears, though the hours waver 

in high tide far above the bedrock 

where I once stood. Sometimes there comes 

a candle on the water, lit by 

stronger hands and pushed off in faith 

upon the current. And so 

a dripping flame holds by the spirit’s side  

as nothing else today, when 

I could not bear to feel for all the being.