Vox Populi
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Ed Simon: The Pennsylvanian Period
There must be stones in Frick Park
that no human hand has ever touched.
The stratified Conemaugh, of Ames
limestone, sandstone, shale, and
Duquesne coal. Threaded ribbon rock
beneath Fern Hollow of epochs
Devonian, Pennsylvanian, Carboniferous.
These stones that once sat on the equator,
where warm tropical waves buffeted
them on rocky shoals in the temperate
days of an unimaginable distance,
smoothed to a uniformity and hidden
beneath all that which we do not say
or no, the vastness of the land in time
as much as in space, the mountains
themselves older than all bones.
There must be stones in Frick Park
that no human hand has ever touched,
and that none ever will.
~~~~
Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, a staff writer for LitHub, and the editor of Belt Magazine. A widely published author, his work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, The Millions, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among dozens of others. His many books include Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, a “Best Book of 2024” at The New Yorker.
Copyright 2025 Ed Simon
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We poor humans think we know so much. I really don’t think we do. Perhaps, there really are worlds beneath earth’s know surface that we cannot detect; incomprehensible creatures and processes. Maybe, sci-fi isn’t just fantasy. The emerging study of Mycorrhizal fungal networks fascinates me. Beware!
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The underground fungal networks are fascinating! Who knew that all life depended on them feeding the plant roots?
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I like the frame around the inner geology of this poem. A reminder of the shortness of human history, the duration of Earth’s building blocks. It makes me want to go to Frick Park to kick around some rocks, but even better, have a geologist along to tell me what I’m shifting.
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Thanks, Jim. This meditation on geology, the layers beneath our feet, interests me. Any other poet would have given into the temptation to use geology as a metaphor for the layers of consciousness, or of the soul, or of the past. Ed stays with his subject in admirable discipline, avoiding the temptation to make himself the subject. .
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His sticking to the geology is appreciated. The Anthropocene as a geological epoch has become a metaphor for all sorts of human chicanery. I’m not surprised that a poet from Carnegie Mellon would know something about science!!!
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The stone will not burn, because the fire inside the stone is more fierce than all other fires, it flickers faintly all the time.
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Fascinating!
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