The Strength Beneath

The years stripped borrowed clay away,
And left the buried stones revealed.
What seemed like ruin cleared the way
For strength no surface ever sealed.

Three ladders leaned like solemn vows,
Their rungs held memory in stone.
They joined the vanished with the now,
Each living hand learned what was known.

Below, the women shaped the earth
With motions older than a name.
No witness weighed their labor’s worth;
No praise could sanctify the same.

Beyond, the mountain kept its place,
While seasons worried skin from stone.
It watched the wall reveal its face
And stand more wholly as its own.

So much of us is plastered thin
To hide the fractures we have known.
But every wound that lets truth in
Reveals the strength beneath the bone.

Let every borrowed layer fall.
Let loss uncover, not erase.
The truest self survives it all.
We were the strength beneath the face.