[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.]
She rests in my hand, the cold stone,
a seed from Earth’s heart,
planted in my soul. I press her to my chest
and I am now a menhir, tall and unwavering,
moving and changing but so slowly that
my present is millennia of millennia.
I am made from stardust drawn to our home planet,
born a billion years ago, a long time to
watch, wait, witness myself in my true immoveable essence
as my sisters, stars created from the same elements,
cycle across the sky in the repeating orbits
that enthralled my oldest ancestors in the awe
that made them, and me, and you, human.
Ask me who you truly are in your most unchangeable core?
Ask me what is your own one and true place
in this matrix of life that is Gaia?
You already know for what stands within me stands within you.
The warm waters run over the stone,
the river of life diverted for a moment
from the relentless pulse that sustains life
to prance, sparkle, shimmer, whirl
in chaotic creative vivacity.
I am that which takes life’s harshest times,
which can seem so random, so cruel, and so cold as ice,
and surround barren despair with life’s hope and regeneration
to go onward another day.
I am that which reaches around the world in
oceans flowing to rivers, flowing to lakes and streams,
in even the remotest places,
bringing love, care, compassion, truth, justice, peace,
in my words, deeds, thoughts, and prayers.
Ask me how I can send my energy out into the world?
Ask me if one person’s smallest actions can make a difference?
You already know for what cascades over all the Earth runs within you.
The moonlight casts gentle illumination and clarity
over both stone and water.
I can see my hand, my body, my mind, my soul, my spirit.
The moon, round and revolving around the Earth,
like a mother hovering around her toddling brood,
is a giant eye looking down at us
to show us the way in the most ominous night.
The moon’s light reflects the sun,
that star formed when dust and gas, the stuff of the cosmos,
come together, igniting into a fireball of light and warmth.
Ask me how do I keep the flash of faith alive?
What force of the universe keeps me
putting one foot in front of the other year after year?
You already know for the light of the moon shines through your eyes.
In this moment of a small stone in the water lit by the moonlight,
just a flash in the four billion year history of the Earth,
on a tiny spot in the vast expanse of this minuscule planet in the universe,
we are here to experience all that this second offers
just by the accident of being born.
Or no, perhaps the Creator was just waiting for us to appear
and bring completion to the story of the stone, the water, the moonlight,
yet another grand legend in the mythology of all that is,
so important is each moment in our glorious, blessed lives.
And we learn from each teacher — the stone, the water, the moonlight —
that we are equally a part of Earth’s infinite beauty.
Not above her, better than her; not below her, inferior to her;
but of her, with our own place in her vast swell of creative power.
A stone in the waters lit by the moonlight
now touched by a human hand.