Fredric Koeppel
Stone
We gathered the stones that slew
the adulterous woman. They were
warm from the sun. Heaped in baskets,
they made loads for two men to carry.
My neighbors chose sizes and shapes
to patch the gaps in garden walls
or replace the fallen lintels over their
door-posts. I found a smaller, rounded
stone, cleft at one end, as if someone
had started to chisel a message, then
dropped his tools and never returned.
It stands on my threshold and props
open the door where I sit after a day's
labor, and the cooling breezes blow
down from the eastern mountains.
Bio
Fredric Koeppel lives in Memphis, stays home to manage a pack of rescued dogs, cooks and writes the wine review website:
biggerthanyourhead.substack.com.
He has had poems,
stories and novel excerpts published in Painted Bride Quarterly,
New World Writing, Many Mountains Moving, Iowa Review, Vox Poetica, Moving Force Journal and other print and online magazines.