The Teapot Rock

What’s the way to be small?
A jagged basalt chunk
Sets in a scree of them

Ponderosas have grown
Up around. It’s been there
Long enough for lichen

To have encrusted it,
Probably longer than
Humans have had writing.

The shape of a teapot,
Roughly, it has a lid—
A small part of the rock,

Palm-sized, can be lifted
Like a cap. It still fits
Precisely, so that

When set back down, it looks
Contiguous, no seam
Visible where the part

Fits to its former whole.
Every few months, starting
In spring, ending each fall,

You stop to walk that cliff
Through the ponderosas
To that basalt boulder

To check if the broken
Tip still sits as snugly
In its precarious

Spot, like a fitted lid.
No matter what blizzards
Or summer thunderstorms,

No matter the lizards
Scampering over it,
The deer browsing by it,

The traffic of ravens,
Turkeys, and coyotes,
It’s been there, whole at rest,

For years now. That’s one way
To be small. Lift the lid.
Settle it back. Just so.