I am made of stone/I am water

The poem below is the result of an exercise rather boldly called 'coupling' in poetry workshopping circles!
I have taken a poem, which is one of my favourites written by my Rockhopper poetry performance colleague Mel Perry, and I have used it to create a new piece of work.
Mel's poem 'I am made of stone', which appears in her collection Rum Dark Nights, always makes the hairs on my neck stand to attention when I read it, especially so when I read it aloud.
When The Poetry School suggested 'coupling' as an exercise as part of this year's Write a Poem a Day for a Month project,  #NaPoWriMo, I chose 'I am Made of Stone' as my starting point.
You take a favourite piece of work -- poetry or prose -- and intertwine it with new lines of your own to make a new poem.
More info about this technique can be found in
 the links below.
Here's the result of that first experiment:

I am made of stone/I am water

A coupling after ‘I am made of stone’, by Mel Perry (from Rum Dark Nights)

I am made of stone.

                I am water.

Blue dolerite with feldspar

                aquamarine with hammered pewter

shards from Pembrokeshire hills,

                rushing from Plynlimon

indigo slate from Conwy quarries,

                streaming shingle in Cilgerran gorge

black anthracite, hand-hewn.

                coursing over granite in Cwm Gwesyn

I am made of stone.

                I am water.

Burren limestone, its grikes

                holding drops of rain

harbouring jewel plants,

                magnified in pools

letting water seep, cry

                weeping from the inner core

tears through fissures

                squeezing through fractures

that drip, drip, stalactiting

                forming bead by bead

down, catching minerals

                in moisture of air

like letters, that flavour

                fluid carvings

words on the page

                reflected on rock

colour poems in the dark.

                I am water.

I am made of stone.

                flowing, fluent

Not to be rolled, not cold

                not to be impeded

part of the Fennoscandian shield

                perpetual, unbroken

crystalline, metamorphosed.

©Mel Perry and Jackie Biggs 2018

Links…

Rum Dark Nights, by Mel Perry, is published by Three Throated Press:  http://www.iconau.com/three-throated-press

The original prompt for this piece of work came from the Poetry School’s 2018 #NaPoWriMo prompts: https://poetryschool.com/

... which referenced this helpful article: http://mccarthywoolf.com/projects/mslexia-interview/

One of my earlier blogs about The Rockhoppers: http://jackie-news.blogspot.com/2016/10/bird-calls-feathers-and-extreme-flights.html

 Photos: ©JackieBiggs2018