Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
STONE, STAR, FIELD
“...one moment
your life is a stone
in you, and the next,
a star.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
There, in the pocket of my coat,
the black stone I took from an Oregon beach
a year ago, sitting on the sand remembering Jerry,
who died six years after he photographed
that exact view of ocean and cliff,
the sky half orange, half blue.
Now, crossing the prairie he loved so long
afterward, I palm the stone, time rounded
and compressed. Big bluestem just starts
to soak up the heat rising toward the roof.
Birds stop, then start again. Wind too.
I was wrong to think my life was a small stone,
I once thought my life was a small stone,
perfectly fitted into my palm, then forgotten
until I stepped out in the dark, finally the
humidity abated enough that I could see clusters
of stars we name into something we can track.
I was wrong to think I was a star also, part of
Leo, a lion that could well be two kites tangling
tails, the big and little bears of big and little dippers,
each a hook of light grabbing hold of what’s in the past.
No it was always a field that holds, doesn’t hold
both, even this body a pocket of ground
compressing light into something solid.