What We Cannot Understand

158 words

Here, half hidden in the meadow grass, stones
Still circle something that they’ve circled for
A thousand years or so. There’s no old bones
Here, no buried cache of golden crowns or
Ancient jewels—only these rocks, nothing more

Than them. Still, they hold something in their midst,
In the ground of the circle itself, clear
As the space and as unknown. What is it? 
Ah, who can say that did not engineer
And build this place? We see it as our year

Presents it—eroded and encroached—not
As it was. What is left of it we feel
Thinly, and through a veil of time that’s shot
With age and shrunk with wear. Structural steel
Mortared brick, planked wood, cob—all these hold real

Reason to us these days, each one designed
For a use designated today: man
Made, man understood. But this space, defined
By rocks as more than merely fallow land.
This space holds what we cannot understand.