Poetry: Geology by Bob King

American Life in Poetry

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to,
saying, "Well, you know, love is like...it's like...well, YOU
know what it's like." Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado,
takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of
rocks.

Geology

I know the origin of rocks, settling
out of water, hatching crystals
from fire, put under pressure
in various designs I gathered
pretty, picnic after picnic.

And I know about love, a little,
igneous lust, the slow affections
of the sedimentary, the pressure
on earth out of sight to rise up
into material, something solid
you can hold, a whole mountain,
for example, or a loose collection
of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.

Reprinted from the Marlboro Review, Issue 16, 2005, by
permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Robert King,
whose prose book, "Stepping Twice Into the River: Following
Dakota Waters," appeared in 2005 from The University Press of
Colorado. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry
Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of
English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does
not accept unsolicited poetry.


For more poems, check outWrite Now: Poems: Salty and Sweet