I Have Etched A Conundrum (early 1990's)

I have etched a conundrum
slantwise onto a memory
of a small stone wall in my past

I have fooled myself this time, and
have lost the code, that one
element that would expedite
an explanation, an explication

This is now your task.
First, what is the end to this
Sphynxian beginning?
Second, among the warehouse of songs
and stories that I stand guard over,
which remembrance has been
wrestled forth, and scratched upon
now, much later, incomprehensibly?
Third, upon which pile of old New England rocks is
this undecipherable riddle written?

When the stone is placed around the wood
which burns,
the letters shall (in the gray becoming red) become black,
shine forth, and be perfectly clear.
But rarely do we find the occasion to
sit around a circled pile of burning wood
and on those rare occasions that we do,
it is nothing more than a self-conscious,
even self-aggrandizing,
pathetic attempt to return.

However, should you perchance
find yourself cross-legged next to a fire such as this,
and then come to realize that you had not planned on it,
Take the memory of this poem,
look down upon the circle of those burning stones,
and perhaps you shall read there
the riddle that I slantwise etched so long ago.

Of course, all that is only to FIND the damn riddle.
If you can decipher the undecipherable,
if you can put the nose back on the sphinx,
if you can sew the thread back to the lamb,
if you can hear the song before it is sung,
Please
Pick up the rock, be careful not to burn
your hands, pick up the rock and bring it to me.
I would like to remember too