WHETSTONE
To inherit such an object:
no one here knows
how to use it anymore but
one day we’ll read what to do
in an unforeseen
moment of necessity.
This long oval in heavy dark grey,
its keen, mineral roughness.
A hole at one end
where the ancient string goes through
to hang it over the door:
as much a talisman as tool.
There is frost on its breath,
a dormant sound busy with crystals,
it goes steep steep
up into the night sky
with its wound
that cannot be healed.
And so it waits,
with the patience born
from lying under a volcano,
all roiling dreams and temperance,
a thing and also half of a thing
looming towards an edge unknown.
_______________________________________________________________________
DAVID HAWKINS is a writer, editor and naturalist from Bristol, England. He was awarded second prize in the 2015 UK National Poetry Competition. Recent work has also appeared in Stride, The Hopper and Blackbox Manifold, and is forthcoming in BlazeVOX.
_______________________________________________________________________
Read more by David Hawkins:
Poem in Blackbox Manifold
Poem at The Poetry Society
Poem in Stride