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Posts Tagged ‘rocks’

Choosing the Sorrow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 22, 2024| 6 Comments »

 
In my heart today, a river of love for you—
sparkling, clear, easy to wade in.
Some may not understand
why I sometimes reach down
to pick up a smooth stone of sorrow,
not because I have stumbled on it,
but because I want to know its weight again.
I search beneath the glossy currents,
and always I find what I seek.
There are thousands of such stones,
enough to cover the whole river bed.
Every one of them precious.
Every one of them, a memory
of how it was to love you when you were alive.
Stone of you waking in your crib, pointing to light.
Stone of you doing tricks on your bike.
Stone of hiking up cliffs. Stone of undone dishes.
Stone of your eyes. Stone of long fingers.
Stone of you whistling across the room.
The river of love is no less powerful
for all this sorrow. When I am still,
often I choose to go wading here.
I notice how beautiful they are, all these stones,
worn as they are by the currents of love.
I notice how the current never stops.

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Standing Beside the River with Lulu

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 9, 2023| 9 Comments »


Within minutes of weeping,
we are tossing rocks
into the river, the bigger
the splash, the larger
our laugh, and we toss
and we toss in a sweet
and urgent ritual of loss.
Slipping in the mud,
it feels right we should
lose our balance. What is
this life, after all, but a constant
slipping, a constant recalibrating,
a constant learning to find
new paths toward each other?
This life, it turns out,
is likely to pick us up
and throw us into the deep
to see what happens next.
But on this night,
we pick up more stones
and toss and toss and toss.
Not one of them floats.
But we do.

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Beside the River with My Daughter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

Hundreds of smooth red stones—

we gathered them that summer

and spent days carefully laying them out

into a wide and winding red path.

It had no real starting point, no destination.

We tucked white daisies between the rocks.

We said it was for the fairies.

I wouldn’t have said it then, in fact,

I hesitate today to say we didn’t believe in them.

They gave us so much purpose.

Even now, I’m following that path.

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Watching Rachel Balance Rocks beside the River

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 1, 2012| 5 Comments »

She does not choose
the flat rocks, the ones
that might stack like bricks.

She chooses a slender volume
of gray sandstone, rounded
to a point on one side,

and balances it on the beach,
point side up. The next rock
is also a misshapen thing … not

at all a likely candidate
for balancing, much less on its edge,
but with gentle fingers

Rachel sets it on its knobbed
end and moves her hands away.
It is not at all straightforward.

What balances, balances
through patience and some odd grace,
and Rachel adds an egg shaped oval

rock into the notch at the top and backs away.
The pile miraculously stands.
Though I try to turn my mind

toward metaphors for love,
there is nothing to get here
except the pleasure of sitting

beside the river, the hatch
catching in our hair, stacking rocks
one on top of the other, one unlikely

sweet spot at a time before they all
fall down.

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Here

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 20, 2011| 3 Comments »

Perhaps
these rocks
that look
like stumb-
ling blocks
are cairns,
and I
have, with
such diligence,
been kicking
them from
my way—
oh foolish
woman
who thought
that she
was lost.

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13 Ways of Looking at the Rocks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 13, 2011| 1 Comment »

Gilgamesh, too, found rocks
in his path. They were like crumbs
for Hansel and Gretel, like
Ariadne’s red fleece thread.
It’s so hard, sometimes,
to see how we are being led.
We think we know the path.
We think we know something.

*

In a dream, I say,
It’s the rocks
that I just can’t let go of.

*

By the river, all the rocks
are softened, tumbled and smooth.
They are nearly impossible
to balance, to stack—
but possible it is.

*

So on the path
Gilgamesh, in his urgency,
smashed the rocks.

*

The ice
is thin.
The rocks,
flung underhand,
make such
satisfying holes.
Why is it satisfying?
The sound of shattering.
The sksksksksksk of pond ice resettling.
The hole.

*
Inside the stone,
it is dark.
Not like a shadow.
Like dark.

*

He broke everything
he needed
to find his way.

*

I do not know
why I break
what I need,
why I repel
what I love,
why I hold on
to rocks in a dream.

*

It’s not a path,
says my teacher,
it’s a beckoning.

*

By the continual
creeping of ants
a stone
will wear
away.

*
A stone
thrown into the pond
will not move
for many, many, many years.
A stone
thrown into the pond
is not lost.

*

There is no permanence.

*

My son says, Mom,
they’re all so beautiful,
every one of these rocks.
We toss them,
rock by rock,
into the river.

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