PotD #216: “A Stone” [Revised 8.7.2013] Stones are pushed in runnels worked and reworked in every stream of water, every stream of experience. Their shoulders are smoothed under the sun’s glare, under the moon’s slow gaze, under the weight of water passing. Who of us sees the stone flat on the river’s bed, below the flowing mirror hiding the hellbender? Who has watched a falcon fly from the cathedral rocks? Who knows the sweet scent, to that hungry and honest actuary gliding over the badlands – the vulture – calculating his chances to eat the dead mule deer on the rocky muddy basin? Who has watched the deer bleed on the stone, and then the Lord’s prayer intoned, or quoted the Bhagivad Gita, like Oppenheimer, that he had become death? Who has hidden under a stone from his wife’s blinding wrath? Who held up the stone to stop her gaze from knowing betrayal? Who crawled from under it, and walked toward the pool where new stones cleansed their feet, where, like Mary Magdelene, they invited forgiveness? Have you leapt from wave-worn stone to the basalt outcrop to watch the roiling nutrient bath spill across the gaping mussels cycling in concert the waves’ constant living gifts. Who sees their lives in these mouths or the tidal crabs’ eyes, or the pelicans’ bill, or the frigate birds’ perch on the sentinel rock? A stone feels tender feet, witnesses long fingers breaking the surface tension, shaded by bellies aching for meaning. A stone is like an arm. You can rest your chin on it. You can think, wonder, and speak to a lover about things with your eyes closed and the cool cotton under you on a bed you should never have entered, or a room where you held a smoothed stone from the ocean, a stone that is true, a small stone in your palm a moment in creation’s wonderment, like a bed or a crab’s eye or things that never were or are but could be. A stone is a moment, worked and reworked in the water.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 02:33:54 +0000
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