Sonnet: Becoming Stone by Martin Willitts Jr.

The rain clacks on stones, chanting

as carefully as snowmelt. Perhaps, it is rain

from the Pleiades: seven doves or sisters fleeing.

A heron stands near water’s edge on the largest rock,

while rain deepens the experience of meditation.

The heron listens to the messages, the sacred

chants, telling the heron when the world ends.

The rain takes its time telling this news.

I see the heron cocking its head towards words.

I need to learn the pace of stones, 

before I’d understand the slowed-down

words of rocks from the Creation of stars:

time is less than one rain drop; what are you doing,

when you could be merging with life?







Martin Willitts Jr won the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, November 2016, and a Central New York Individual Artist Award for "Poetry On The Bus".