Afterlife for ephemeral things

Lie you down

For you are tiny

And the hill is vast.

 

Limestone water runs

Over your every surface

Clothes you in fine deposits.

 

Dry and still

Last year’s hawthorn berry

Forgotten things turning to stone.

 

Against the earth

Calcium coated anonymous form

Surrendering to the hillside’s colour.

 

This is not

How rocks are made

Only ghosts, imprints and memories.

 

Your soft body

Leaves no trace behind

But the water imagined shell.

 

Dripstone crystal echo

Of what is gone

Absorbed and made most still.

 

 

(I live on limestone hills. When the calcium of the rocks is absorbed into water, that water can evaporate to form dripstone, which is a kind of quartz, and can attach itself to anything that stays still for long enough.)