There are places where
time lies down and waits
while the years build up,
collecting like dust on a shelf
or sediment in a creek bed.
Where people’s lives
cut pathways of memory
into the bones of the earth
Come.
Lay your hand here
on the cut stone
and listen.
Really listen
Not with your ears,
but with all of you.
These are the places where
long-fallen footsteps
are ground into the rocks.
Where the pools of old laughter
and forgotten sin
leave ripples in the earth,
and the air holds all the breath
once spilled in loving hatred
and held tight in fear.
Can you hear it?
A tangled chord
washing through you
like a deep moan,
tolling the falling years?
A low, full sound that
shakes the sympathetic rhythms
of your heart?
Can you feel it?
These are the places where
all the cares that came and went,
and came again
are woven into the fabric of being.
Where the bounds between
here and there,
now and then,
buckle under the weight of it all.
Come.
This is such a place.
Put your hand
on the cut stone
and ask it what it knows.
The story of the world
is singing at you,
asking you
to hear it.
Open your soul to it
and listen.
