The Foolish Project

Every piece is a peg placed
In the quincunx of the cliff,
Wooden dowels stuck in stone.

You imagine the whole thing
As a strange installation,
A kind of kitsch landscape art—

The bare, veined granite cliff face
Of the actual mountain
Studded evenly with pegs

Spaced so that small pebbles dropped
From the lip will dribble down,
Bouncing through randomizing

Individual impacts,
Each pebble on its own path
To accumulate a curve,

A single arc of sine wave,
A visual bell ringing
The signature of the Earth

At the bottom of it all.
You’ll never get to the bell,
You know that. You’ll never stand,

Satisfied at the bottom,
Gazing on your handiwork,
A pinhead made of bedrock,

Much less have the years to drop
Enough pebbles to reveal
Its ghost law of unreason.

But you know it’s down there. You know,
With each day, each carved dowel
You place in that blank stone face,

That you’re announcing you know
To the world what shape’s in it,
Calling it out, piece by piece.