Child's Park Stones

In sunless air, under pines
 Green to the point of blackness, some
 Founding father set these lobed, warped stones
 To loom in the leaf-filtered gloom
 Black as the charred knuckle-bones
 Of a giant or extinct
 Animal, come from another
 Age, another planet surely. Flanked
 By the orange and fuchsia bonfire
 Of azaleas, sacrosanct
 These stones guard a dark repose
 And keep their shapes intact while sun
 Alters shadows of rose and iris ---
 Long, short, long --- in the lit garden
 And kindles a day's-end blaze
 Colored to dull the pigment
 Of the azaleas, yet burnt out
 Quick as they. To follow the light's tint
 And intensity by midnight
 By noon and throughout the brunt
 Of various weathers is
 To know the still heart of the stones:
 Stones that take the whole summer to lose
 Their dream of winter's cold; stones
 Warming at core only as
 First frost forms the icicle.
 No man's crowbar could
 Uproot them: their beards are ever-
 Green. Nor do they, once in a hundred
 Years, go down to drink the river:
 No thirst disturbs a stone's bed.