July 31: "Stones," Everyday Miracles, Mary Moment

Mary Oliver is a fan of the stones . . .

Stones

by:  Mary Oliver

The white stones were mountains, then they went traveling.

The pink stones also were part of a mountain before

the glacier's tongue gathered them up.

Now they lie resting under the waves.

The green stones are lovelier than the blue stones, I thought

     for a little while,

then I changed my mind.

Stones born of the sediments tell what ooze floated down

     the outwash once.

Stones born of the fire have red stars inside their bodies,

     and seams of white quartz.

Also I admire the heft, and the circularities 

as they lie without wrists or ankles just under the water.

Also I imagine how they lie quietly all night

under the moon and whatever passes overhead--say, the floating

      lily of the night-heron.

It is apparent also how they lie relaxed under the sun's 

      golden ladders.

Each one is a slow-wheeler.

Each one is a tiny church, locked up tight.

Each one is perfect--but none of them is ready quite yet

to come to the garden, to raise corn

or the bulb of the iris.

If I lived inland I would want to take one or two home with me

just to look at in that long life of dust and grass,

but I hope I wouldn't.

I hope I wouldn't take even one like a seed from the sunflower's face,

like an ant's white egg from the warm nursery under the hill.

I hope I would leave them, in the perfect balance of things,

in the clear body of the sea.

My favorite image in this poem:  "Each one is a tiny church, locked up tight."

Most of us don't give a whole lot of thought to the stones beneath our feet.  I know I don't.  Yet, stones have stories and histories.  Ice ages.  Meteor ages.  Volcanic ages.  Moon ages.  Sun ages.  Somehow that pebble got from the top of a mountain or the bottom of sea into your shoe.  When you pick up a beach rock and skip it across the surface of a lake or ocean, you are probably undoing hundreds, if not thousands, of years of stone migration.

Stones are these everyday miracles that nobody takes the time to notice.  

Spend enough time with Mary Oliver, however, and your miracle antennae become a little more finetuned and sensitive.  I now go through my days on the lookout for wonder.  A finger of sunrise scratching the belly of a lake.  A rabbit sipping dew off grass.  Loon laughter in moonless cattails.  I call them Mary Moments.

Today's Mary Moment happened early this morning for me.  I was taking my puppy out for her morning backyard ablutions when I looked up into the branches of my lilac bushes.  There was the sun, trapped in its leaves.  I stood there, dazzled to stone for several seconds before the gravity of the day pulled me back into action.

A small miracle.  A tiny church, unlocked for a fraction of a heartbeat for Saint Marty.