Stone

STONE I spent my youth presenting as stone, sure that protection from the violent vicissitudes of the human condition lay in a geologic journey, the only real threat the unlikely complications of continental drift Hence, I hadn’t allowed for magmatic rifting and related events that easily turn stone into liquid and fire, let you harden and rise, gracefully aging in the capricious company of tectonic gymnastics the unpredictable processes of water and ice, of sunshine, warmth, the generation of life She is seventy-two now with soft tummy fat, and generous inclinations; I paint her toes when she asks and offer when she doesn’t Like the Adirondacks of New York, the circular appendage to the Canadian Shield, I was a great granite dome but the gradual journey to a softer, worn condition, recklessly alive with intelligent life, has been a beautiful thing – gray hair, great smiles, sunlight and stone, the gentle topography of the landscape of “we”!