what the stone holds

Pingvillar

the natural world draws me

to sit at its feet and listen to its stories,

to climb into its arms and let it hold me,

to feel it protect the best of me,

and let me find my way into the secrets

of a waterfall, of moss and lichen

who paint themselves over basaltic rock,

of a natural garden where flowers are only a small part

of the beauty that reveals itself

around every bend, every stop, of the trail,

the volcanic rock remembers its origins

as it hardened into gray stone 

that still holds the ripples of its flow,

just below us, a great lake,

left over from the glacier’s gouge,

with the clear waters and wonders just below the surface

that call people to snorkel and scuba its beauty,

and there, where the North American plate rises as a cliff,

over a thousand years ago, Icelandic people met as a parliament,

out under the sky, with water and rock holding them as if a parent,

so that they could rise to the best their collectivity could then muster,

at the top of the ridge, a stone holds between two opposing rocks,

poised as if to symbolize the contention from which truth can emerge.

by Henry H. Walker

August 6, ‘17