Three Stones

Hello Dear Friends,

This is an excerpt from my vision statement for my November Project. The photo is from three years ago. She is looking across Burrows Bay near the San Juan Islands. That was the last day I saw her.

Thanksgiving On Burrows Island

I sit on the stoop of the cabin painted with the bright green and purple of happiness and whimsy. The grey rain falls on the forest canopy, catching in the Spanish moss, never reaching the bones of last years roses below. Across the wilting glen, only ten yards away, is a circle of three standing stones. Each is about waist high. One stone is granite, sharp and bright. It is the memorial to my brother. One stone is sea green and strange in its slant over the moss. That stone is for her, set in the very last spot we held each other in the sun. The third stone is molten red and humped, smoothed by some ancient waterfall. She is for the living Song of the Island. She is the Great One roaming in my lineage, now whispering in the swaying cedar and hemlock.

I watch the circle, expecting movement. But stones never move when you watch them. I stand, my head dizzy beneath the single strip of gauze wrapping an old and healing wound. My mouth is open to the sky, free to catch the few unstrained drops falling. The grass is still, supple and bending low with last nights fog. My boots and jeans are baptized in their passing touch as I walk to my altar of solitude… to the stones removed from my head… stones full of stories… stones of longing that must sung.

I kneel, sinking into loam and next spring’s seed cones. I wrap my arms around the three. I look out with my mind and feel the waves, languorous on the shore. I feel the boat waiting for me. But the crossing back to the village can wait. Braving the cold floor of ocean can wait. The crying wind in the sails can wait. I have lives to save, no less my own.
So, I begin to sing.

RS