Gargoyles
They all are far more solid than we are,
the gargoyles on the grand cathedrals. Stone
lasts long. When we are piles of ash or bone,
the gargoyles’ eyes, although they don’t see far,
will still behold a town, a shooting star,
their ears will tremble to a mourner’s groan,
their shoulders shrug from which a falcon’s flown,
their tongues curl insect-like from jaws ajar.
Some people think all things are conscious, no
exceptions. We don’t know what gargoyles think,
but I suppose, perhaps, of us. That might
explain their grins and grimaces, their wink,
which takes them years, their gap-toothed overflow
of rain through lips that part with shrewd delight.
Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), The Mirror Test (2024), Star Anchors (2026) and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.
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