Bette Jane Camp
The Great Going
By ruby jones
(THE CASTLE) —
Gargoyles. He starts to giggle
when he sees them,
grunting out of elevators
to the top.
Gallons of gray later, he
reaches the edge. He can hear
the graphs of his followers
below.
He huddles back, pulls out his vow
to galvanize
the grave-laying
men.
And then,
glibly:
“Greatness!”
“Mine’s a power
not graying,” he barks, “but
“glowing.”
He gives way not to “the gatekeepers”,
golden and gauging, beside him, but to
those “on the ground,
those hit
by the guidelines,”—
the guidelines
being the trees, which he gouged out
some granite
ago,
to where greatness
will be always
going.
So
grounding will his time be as
a gargoyle
that he’ll guard the castle
with the gap
between
him
and his ghost.
Ruby Jones is grandmother of 26, immigrant and volunteer reporter. She sits on the village council and in the director’s chair during Town Musical season (2008–present).
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Bette Jane Camp’s poems appear or are forthcoming in FORTH Magazine, Blind Glass Magazine and the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation. She hails from Mukilteo, Washington and currently lives and works in Vermont.
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