Calming stones

I hold my breath
Lest I inhale the universe.
~missprune

Each night last week at my parents' house I crawled into bed with missprune's book of poetry, Still Mystified. We have been reading one another for at least six years, first on Themestream. In April 2003, we joined LiveJournal together. This book was published the same year. Now I finally have a copy in my eager hands.

It evokes both human warmth and natural beauty. Some verses blaze with friendly five-year-old familiarity. Sometimes the imagery is blinding:

"I want a sun that bleeds red poppies out of ancient stones."

One poem inspired me to search for a calming stone (what a better term that is than worry stone, worry is my nemesis!). The day Brenna and I walked in the mist, I chose six candidates, discarding one. The fossil intrigued me, but such a stone should for its purpose be featureless. The dark one seemed best. I carried it in hand. By the time we got home, it had already turned glossy and dark with oil from my skin.

To think that in all the years I lived at Poplar Bluff Beach, I never got so close to a stone! It's a good poem that sends us deeper into life.


Five candidates