How I grow a poem

I’m working on a poem about choices, using stones as messengers and emblems.  Unless the poem comes to me fulll-term birth, I usually write down every random thought for the idea.  

Stone with Chrysicolla vein

I carry a few stones with me all the time in my pack.  One is a crystal one of reading students found in Arkansas, another is a lovely, smooth stone with a vein of Chrysicolla. 

I have three geodes from Bloomington, IN (the terminal moraine), near where I used to live, that sit on the porch and are now buried under snow with the porch frog.  I have my reading rocks to manage the summer breezes.  Brad brought me back a big chunk of alfastein from Iceland.  I have a piece of slickensides I picked up at the San Andreas Fault during a college geology class, pacific plate side.   I’m remembering literary references to suicides with stones in their pockets to weigh them down in the river, overcome the survival instinct.  I’ve seen rocks piled up into cairns beside paths at Buddhist monestaries, rocks shaped into arrows, rocks formed into walls, homes, chimneys.  Stones are gravemarkers. David killed Goliath with a stone.  Stones ‘grow’ albeit very slowly.  I’m enamored of the inuksuits, but I’ve already written them into another poem.

I’m feeling that the way to go is to write about choices, rocks picked up, kept, others discarded.  As soon as I have it complete, I’ll share it.