Gastrolith

(Poetry Scales 35)  

I still remember as a kid in school learning about those rocks
that, though not bone turned into rock,
were still fossils.

Swallowed by dinosaurs to help grind the food in their stomach,
that otherwise would go undigested.

They were crucial to life.

People don’t like swallowing
hardness and pain,
even the kind that helps.

Sometimes one ends up with hardships anyway,
the sort caused by one’s own doing.

Instead of gastroliths,
we get fecalomas.