Granite

I am a glacial erratic.  Can you see that scratch on my lower backside, where the glacier pushed me across bedrock?  So heavy, it made a groove.  It itches, and I can’t reach it.  Sometimes the wild rose scratches me there; it feels good and green.  I came from the mountain, pushed down hill then carried over land.  I was dropped into this field of pebbles. The only thing I have in common with my neighbor rocks is our igneous beginning.   Sometimes I think I can smell the sulfur from the volcano that formed me, but it turns out to be smoke from yet another wildfire. I can see for a long way, from the past, then across that valley to the river.  I am here for the duration, too heavy to roll, unless they build a road over me, or there’s another ice-age.  Time is short, and long, when you are made of granite.  Just forming took an eon.  That journey was amazing, though.  Thrust up from below the mantle, then solidifying and cracking, a small piece of a big mountain. The glacier ride was a breeze, just 10,000 years or so ago, a blip in my lifetime.  Now I watch.  Seasons change.  Trees grow, trees die. Cougars used to rest on me, now the lichen grows.  Freezing and thawing rounds off my edges a granule at a time, but I figure I’ll be here for a while longer before I erode down to join the soil.