You know, that stone fortress
by Emily Lam, Presbyterian Ladies’ College
Years 7 – 8 Written Poetry Finalist
There’s a big rock, cobweb-coated
in one corner of our backyard deck.
Smooth and grey
about the same size as one of those
sourdough loaves you can buy from Coles.
Fresh feather-light fluffiness, their comforting scent floats through the bread aisle,
enticing buyers near.
Let a week pass, and what was once soft airiness becomes rock-solid, unappetising.
No matter-one less loaf on the shelves-it gets replaced by another, essentially the same.
It always does.
Maybe I’m the only one who still remembers
that summer-gold day I dragged that rock out of the courtyard
hugging it to my chest like a prize
stumbling over the warm deck planks to place it there.
Sometimes I’ll find myself staring at that rock
and catch myself wondering how an eight-year-old lifted that.
Funny what we’re capable of
when we’re trying to prove something.
I told my sister about it-she was the one who had bet me that I couldn’t do it.
Now, I had.
She asked me what I meant to do with it,
and I didn’t reply, couldn’t quantify exactly what that rock meant to me.
-Not that it mattered. After all, I had shown her I could do it, hadn’t I? And didn’t she know that
this last rock
would be the last one I would ever need to lift?
That wasn’t the first rock I lifted, struggling laden with my treasure to a safe vantage point-wherever that might be.
I thought it would be my last.
Yet since then, I’ve hefted many, longing for more, piling and polishing them like they matter,
as we do.
Gilding them with our hard work, our effort and pretending it was always that way.
We build entire sites to honour these achievements
display our treasures, screaming out to anyone and everyone
for attention, just a few likes, just something so we know it was all worthwhile.
We build fortresses of the rocks we carry. And we say that
this last rock
will be the one that will make my walls impenetrable.
We invite crowds into our citadel
put gold tapestries on the walls, adorn its floors with costly carpets-but at night forget a bed sleep in and food for the table,
after all, validation is warm while it lasts.
Some nights we walk the halls of our carefully constructed fortress, and feel it’s something
we can be proud of.
We wander through its corridors- we can lose ourselves in its grandeur for a while now, believing that this is what we always dreamed of seeing, of being, that there is no one lost behind the wall of polished stones.
That’s when we pick up our phones…And slowly,
insidiously, washed aside, swamped in those tidal waves of content,
suddenly left scrambling to collect, pore over our former treasures on the beach, clinging to them though pointless pieces of granite are all we see, despite the fact they never meant anything to us unless others could see worth in them.
Stranded on the sand, longing for that stone that would have made our walls alone indestructible, yes, even now, longing for
this
last
rock.
Listen to Emily recite her poem:
How did writing this poem make you feel?
The idea for this poem came a few years ago, when I was standing in the backyard musing over said rock. A child’s quest to prove herself, now almost forgotten. Yet I feel that many of us, myself included, continue this need to prove ourselves throughout our lives. These rocks, as quickly as we attain them, lose meaning, and in the grand scheme of things, mean little. Yet we assiduously collect them, even measuring our success by them, and agonise over them to no small extent. Upon reflection, I found this-society’s measure of what to call important or valuable-astonishing, in its way. So I wrote a poem about it.
Which single line in your poem are you the absolute proudest of?
‘Maybe I am the only one who still remembers/that summer-gold day I dragged that rock out of the courtyard/hugging it to my chest like a prize/stumbling over the warm deck planks to place it there.’
Describe your poem in three words
Yearning, pursuit, facade.
Where is your absolute favourite place to sit when you are brainstorming ideas?
In the grass at the bottom of our garden, cooled by the shadow of a slightly dilapidated garden shed sitting at a small table.
Why do you think people write poetry?
People write in poetry what they can’t in prose-emotions are given worth even in their unreasonable bias, there is room for the smallest of thoughts and most minute flashes of feeling or reflection. Simply put, people write poetry because it seems to accept even what is most vulnerable and flawed, as well as all that is admirable, about ourselves.