Sleeping Giant | John Muro

As a child, I kept waiting for you
to rise from your deep, uneasy
sleep, dumbstruck and stumbling
towards a foreign sea just beyond
the edge of your long shadow, guided
by the oily light that sits upon the
waves, where I might watch you
draw down banks of clouds and
a distant sky closer to the Sound
and an astounded earth, but still,
like a fallen titan, you remained
transfixed, unable to rise or wander,
contemplating the silent spectacle
of the planets and the stars and
deciphering the language of ancestral
gulls and crows as groves of
aromatic cedar blossomed from
thin sediment into the sweeter air
of spring, though now, with days
diminishing, I watch you with
tired eyes in early winter light,
and I see how you have been
summoned back into earth, raw
outcroppings dwindling with
each passing year, still limbless
and unable to separate yourself
from the near horizon, jaw
tightening and your body of basalt
diminishing and falling bit by bit
from the ridge line into these stark,
ragged canyons of ochre scree.

A resident of Connecticut, John has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as the Best of the Net Award.

*A traprock mountain, located in southern New England, that anthropomorphically resembles a sleeping giant. The
native Quinnipiac tribe referred to the mountain range as Hobomock or giant stone spirit.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.