Poetry: Stone Stories

Photo by Vicki K. Westberg
The mug is a family heirloom painted
by my grandmother in 1951 for
my mother whose name is on it.  "Jerri"

Stone Stories

We have thought of them as just a nuisance

Indicating poor soil perhaps, but stones in your garden

Are stories of the past, how it is they appear here

After uncountable years.

They seem to rise to your gaze and amazement.

They could tell you their stories if you could only

Decipher their tacit messages.  How do you translate

Their former fate?  That history is a mystery.

We may dig out the facts preserved in time.

Illustrated with the help of water or rain,

Their colors deepen to gentle green, gray,

Pastel pink perhaps, speckled or striped.

They seem to bloom, but while flowers are the future

Yet untold, stones are the past to unfold in reverse.

Are they pieces of that mountain shifting, ground sifting?

Now looking for contact, for freedom, they await discovery.

Gathered together they help to make a subtle bowl

For a colorful bee bath or bird fountain.

Recovering from sleep do they now feel

Your fondling eyes seeking deep?

        Vicki K. Westberg  May 22, 2024