In the green stretches of my farm

Someone long ago piled stones

Forming small pyramids at random points, no taller than a suitcase.

I dismantled one today, lifting the heavy stones one by one into a trailer to be taken away.

I worked carefully, each stone a part of a city,

Populated with small black beetles,

Spiders, lizards, and slugs.

As I lifted the last stones into the trailer

I found two small frogs

Their brown arms wrapped around each other, their bodies entwined.

It appeared as if they were lovers; in such terror at the destruction of their home

They found comfort in an embrace.

To me, however, as I stood above them vast and terrible, a stone in each hand

To me, they looked as if they had been sleeping

And as lovers sleep,

In a fond embrace.

It was a world of dreams and heartbeats

Each with eyes closed, mouths pressed together

Breathing the same air

A silent kiss, a love in this stone temple,

Safe from the world, witnessed only by the beetles

And now they were exposed to the world, to the rude white light

And a giant.

I scooped them up and placed them in the next pile of rocks and waited

Until they were inside

Safe from the world, from which they must hide.