Paperweight Sonnets

1)
I walked along a northern shore and found
A pebble in my hands. This solid rock
Must weather waves and crushing ice that shock
Its razored unrelenting ridges round
Until uncalloused hands caress it. Worth
No more than sentiment, a paperweight,
It idles on my desk; it's likely fate,
To settle as my sediment to earth.
Once formed within a molten core, condensed,
And broken from nomadic mountain stone,
Its timeless, reckless tale it cannot own.
It knows no self. My sentience breaks against
Its surface, slaps and churns, but can’t displace
A bit of mica from its scabrous face.


2)
My desk without its usual piled debris
Reveals a wide expanse of wood, and one
Remaining paperweight. A falling ton
Of shattered granite, milled and ground-down
scree,
Has left this solitary boulder shard
Ensconced upon my desk, like Hector’s stalled
Attack upon Atrides’ naval wall.
Defying time or tempering; it’s hard
Resistance challenges the polished plane
Of lacquered wood. So easy to remove,
But grim, it glowers and would cut a groove
To anchor itself there. It threatens pain
Upon the flesh that one time felt its sting
In ancient battle from a rawhide sling.

3)
The diamond on her finger wakened hope
That slumbered in this paperweight of mine.
This mongrel rock has no distinction fine
But if there were a prospect, might elope
With solitaire of higher social caste.
It bears within its variegated line
Old veins of quartz and granite, flecks that shine
And gleam like stars. Although it has a past
Not lustrous, but of many shady years,
This paperweight forgets his former life,
And dreams of cultured days and pretty wife.
Alas, the lovely gem prefers her peers
Despite the stony heart so sorely smit.
By crystal purity he’s ground to grit.


4)
This ornamental basalt lightly weighs
The piled-up papers on my desk, as if
It never knew its gravity. Adrift
On seas of time, it floats through current days
Without a sigh. A thousand years are but
A moment to this rock; a day not worth
The mentioning. It’s font in fiery earth
And early years in earthen womb – deep shut
In stygian gloom a million years and more –
Are not a wretched memory; nor, carved
By raging storms, has this stone ever starved
For love. It only shudders at the roar
Of wind and rain and fire and quake and blast
That mean it must be shattered at the last.