A Hollowed Stone

A geologist writes about bones
Petrifying, returning to rock,
And the stray minerals in your bones

Almost ache at the thought. Awareness
Balks. Awareness won’t be permitted
To go on through the transformation,

Nor to come back on the other side.
That’s the thing with fossils. They don’t talk.
They may be packed with information,

And you may invest them with meaning
And claim that they, figuratively, speak,
But they don’t bewail their outcast state.

Awareness may lurk within skull bones,
But nothing much haunts a hollowed stone.