Small Stone for 12 January, 2023

“Midwinter spring” is nature, having swum underwater thus far through the cold season, briefly surfacing, checking land marks, getting a good deep breath, resubmerging and swimming on grimly and doggedly toward spring.

Small Stone for 24 March, 2017

Sunlight shining through raindrops makes rainbows.  Life shining through souls makes art.

Small Stone for 14 July, 2016

“July had been doing a slow burn for weeks, when late this afternoon, the sulky, sun-bleached sky prestidigitated clouds from thin air, heaped them up into a line of portly, big-bosomed fin de siecle matrons in long grey skirts and wide-brimmed hats and sent them flouncing across the sky pitching hissy fits of steam-scented rain.  It  came hurtling down in huge drops that splatted when they hit, slapping against the skin hard enough to sting and drumming on the car roof like tennis shoes in a clothes dryer.”

Small Stone for 6 August, 2015

The peregrini did not seek out the solitary wilds that they might speak to God where there was no other voice to be heard but theirs, but that in the lonely silences at the edge of the world, they might listen where there was no other voice to hear but God’s.  And what else would God have to say in the wail of the wind, in the whisper of the waves, in the wild birds’ cries, in the vast and glittering darkness,  but “I am here.”

Small Stone for April 11, 2015

The white cat bringing me a cat toy he has killed for me is sharply poignant.  I set everything he does against the dwindling number of his days.   He is an old  man.  He will go with his dignity intact; he will go while he still can get there on his own four feet.     The spring song of the mockingbird outside my window runs bluntly perpendicular to the decision that weighs heavy on my heart.

Small Stone For January 24, 2015

Hours go by when I’m OK, when I forget that I’m a fatherless child now, and life goes on like always.  Then the slightest thing, a word, a phrase of Mozart, the butterfly kiss of memory, brushes across the empty socket of his loss, sets off a twinge of “Wish you were here,”  and the emptiness tolls like a silent bell.

Apologies

I started this blog with the best of intentions, and then my computer’s hard drive cratered, and life intruded, and, well. . . . I beg your kind indulgence in allowing me to pick it up again and continue to share my small stones with you whenever I find one.  

Small Stone for July 7, 2011

Household Spell:  A black one and a white one, and the little girl is grey.  There are no more ice cubes until the water freezes, but three will do to chill the Coke.