Overnight to the Near Shore

A stone sleeps a long time. Under butternut shade her toes work the cobble streambed, and one of us says, A stone sleeps a long time.

War ruins everyone, from the sunshine of casualty counts to the yellow ribbons that come and go on her mailbox post.

Before I knew her house I believed in all its lonely hours.

The brook behind our homes, a Proteus sneaking to the sea. I woke this morning, heard it, and knew where I lay. I let her sleep. Making myself at home in a foreign country, I found the coffee pot.

Stones everywhere. Riverclean, their stories polished. Dozens, maybe hundreds. On window sills and side tables, mantles and corners. Cairns in a chapel.

But walls like Shakers. A house that wants no history.

At the kitchen window I watched the day moving into her front yard, and with it a car to her mailbox, then a man, perhaps from the republic of small earnest church cellars, tying a yellow ribbon bow to the post.

She came downstairs. I poured coffee. We stood at the window together. A man came by, I said. I bet he did, she said.

Yesterday she said, You think a hawk will bother a cat? I stood at the end of her driveway, scratching the cat’s chin while its back swept the dust. Depends on the hawk, I said. Maybe the cat too, she said.

Morning lay on her lawn. Her cat watched from the stoop. Putting her cup in the sink she says, You might come by for lunch. I guess I might, I said.

My house is the fourth upstream. The brook, more determined, falls over rocks in pigtails and dreadlocks. My walls and shelves fester with tales of betrayal. Perhaps there should be stones.

When I come back I see the yellow ribbon lying atop the garage bin.
We sit along the brook, eating tuna sandwiches, drinking iced tea. Her toes work the streambed.

So many stones.

Sedimentary.

Igneous.

Metamorphic.

I know so little of stones. Surely some, the deepest dreamers, will find great waters.