STONES - The Ones That Dream

I'm atop a great mound of sheet-like rock, it slides and crumbles underfoot. The occasional snap of shale is like a great crack forming in an ice shelf: startling, sudden, ominous. The undersides of these rocks are indented, thousands upon thousands of shell imprints mark their surface. It’s quiet here. I stand upon millions of years of history and the only thing I hear is the wind and scraping rocks. It feels like this time has been much the same. Scraping across the history of what once was- I know the significance of what’s under each stone, but does that even matter? The wind will continue as it so faithfully has, the rocks of what once were, will always be.

I was there once, as a child searching for fossils. Something so mundane at the time- could I have ever imagined that memory would transform into what it is now? These memories and dreams- could we have imagined they’d transform on us, meet us where we are when we need them? Their surfaces are pitted with what we once thought, but they crack, revealing something new inside. So we add yet another stone for the future us.

The rain washes features away. It smooths the fresh sharpened edges. The wind carries the dust far off. Everything seems to want to take away- soften. So we add more stones to keep up. Should we? Perhaps we’ve been too afraid to simply stop adding. Or, perhaps, that is simply the way of things.

Even in pain are the stones lovingly placed. What will they reveal in time I wonder?