All along it was just a typo –
Shakespeare wrote "put your nose
to the whetstone," it was really wet stone –
fluidity and hardness as one –
water & earth keen
(their pals air & fire high in the cheap seats) –
which explains this morning cutting my foot
on a razor clam, the waves stropping
mother calcium until honed and shaving the beach
of its seaweed beard
Chorus of Stone:
Schist, Breccia, Shale
Chorus of Water:
Sliptide, necessary words
snake like rivers past your tongue
How pushing my nose
ever harder into the future
never sharpened my focus but the world
giving way like a parting flood –
each day standing on the high-dive platform
of the bathroom shower, looking down
into an empty pool –
shocked by cold spray breaking,
a rain of hard water
from spigots cranked to no surrender
Chorus of Stone:
False eyes are made
from glass and agate
Chorus of Water:
Return to the sea
as a walking fish
Always awake to the grind,
the drip that percolates and filters
earth-coffee-tygers-eye brown
through eons of dream limestone,
washing away the strata
until nothing left but fossils,
residue, and silt –
yet another to-go cup, to-go, to
going-going-gone high-kick Rockette fuel –
the world balanced on the edge of our noses
Chorus of Stone:
Hammer, pick, dynamite
Chorus of Water:
Bloodstream, velocity, knife
The Sunday Muse
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qbit 
This is very fine writing. Too many cool tuns of phrase to repeat. A wonderful read.
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“Words snake like rivers past your tongue” wow one of a full poem of stellar lines!! I love this Qbit!!
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Thank you Carrie!!
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Wow!!! That’s what you call fine poetry
Happy Sunday
Thanks for dropping by to read mine
Much💛love
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Thanks! You too!
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That is a most delicious posy of words with which to end my evening on a high. Like a fish gasping for air, I shall return for another cool dive into them before bedtime…*smiles*.
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A dance of words, Randall. A love-dance for the sounds of the words. Well done!
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Much easier than Dancing with Wolves!
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I gtrew up with the saying “nose to the grindstone” … neither whet nor wet! I, too, liked that “words like rivers” phrase. So much to see and think about!
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“Nose to the grindstone/whetstone” – a bit of poetic license that on my part. Wait, hold on! They suspended my license and I’m violating my terms of bail! “Mr. qbit — no more just making stuff up as it if was true and passing that off as poetry…” 20 years to Life if they send me back…
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Interesting bit of chorus after each verse. tygers-eye brown – emitting energy…a lot of fine lines in this one. I can feel the water and shells sharp, yet one still needs to go into the deep – a standing fish who needs to swim.
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Whetstone named after the English town, Whetstone. “Whet” means to sharpen, hence a stone used for sharpening cutting edges of steel or other hard metal. Also meaning to sharpen one’s appetite. We use that term a lot for both uses.
“Nose to the grindstone” would be being close to ones work, typically grinding knives on the revolving pedal wheel of stone.
..
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I experienced so many images swimming in front of me when I read this – and I heard a Greek chorus chanting as your Stone and Water. A wonderful read.
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Fascinating! You took the image and turned it on its head, upside down and all over the place … choruses and all! Your imagination is a beautiful thing.
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Lol, Thanks!
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this was fun to read, like the chorus parts, and loved the images, well written my friend
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Thank you!
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So much to love about this poem….this really stood out for me” How pushing my nose
ever harder into the future never sharpened my focus” I’ve worried about tomorrow while totally wasting my today.
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Thanks!!!
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