Message from the Wayside

There are no edicts on these stones,
Although, being wayside gravel
Trucked in as part of the making

Of this road, they are as human,
As artificial, if you like,
As Ashokan proclamations.

Scrutinize them and all you’ll get
For your waste of time is a sense
Of dreadful sameness in the rocks,

Each pebble technically its own,
Each perfectly replaceable
By any other ground fragment.

This is how they are messages—
Severe, authoritative, bare
Of fossils or writing systems—

Only by seeing all of them
Together, uninformative
In any one piece, any group

Contrasted with any other—
Can you read the collective sign
That this is how the cosmos works,

An infinite repetition
Of finite, minuscule changes.
Everything will have been varied,

All cumulative happenings,
Rocks broken every way they can
Crack, and then heaped by the wayside,

But no summative instructions
To be gleaned from the lot of them.
Edicts are rare aberrations.