‘Large Boulder the Size of a Small Boulder’ by Caspar Bryant

Large boulder the size of a small boulder is completely blocking east-bound lane Highway 145 mm78 at Silverpick Rd.
– San Miguel Sheriff @SheriffAlert

O,
large boulder the size of a small boulder how
exquisite to know you and measure
the height of a Hemsworth brother against
mahogany’s altitude, to measure
deforestation in football fields per minute and it’s
exquisite to measure how much time
we’ve left together probably because the paradoxical
bigness of your littleness delights and distracts me
as does the guilty way we block the highway covered
in snow. O large boulder the size of a small
boulder tell me is a big man bigger on a flat earth
and should we forgive Ezra Pound? Can the cops kick
rocks? Measuring you is better
than eyeballing an asteroid half as big
as a giraffe or measuring a sinkhole
the size of six to seven washing machines
or the interval between the flash and the thunder and the
width of the land but it’s not our land really, O boulder.
You, like the sun could contain unthinkable boulders
the whole prodigious sun as big as a smallish sun
or a great many Hemsworth boys holding hands
in a circle three copies of the Cantos stacked together
or the entire Colorado police force undermined
by the population of Denver and all this almost amounts
to the size of a large boulder made small in the snow.

From issue 18: autumn/winter 2024

About the Author
Caspar Bryant is a poet from west Cornwall. Caspar’s work was shortlisted for the 2023 Oxford Poetry Prize and can be found in SPAM, And Other Poems, Atrium, Propel, Broken Sleep’s anthology Cornish Modern Poetries, and elsewhere.