Mind Over Matter: A Poem

You strange story from childhood 
whose origins I know not—
I remember you said we should 
be guardians of the woods 
of crisis wrought. 

So long ago, I can’t recall
if the story’s birth was true
but thinking back, above else all
 I was given the wherewithal
to become a statue.


A wounded woman, arms severed
stumbles through an empty night.
Her life almost untethered 
with a mind that weathered,
through the quiet she would recite:

“I am stone, I cannot bleed.”
Power in the whisperer. 
She could walk with no hurried speed
but as she spoke there wasn’t need,
her mind was there to help her.