I had a folder with an enlarged photo
Of a small Rocking Boulder
That I was showing
The Schaghticoke Elder,
The Education Director
At The Institute
She asks, “How’s your luck? Is everything “Okay?” Nothing
bad happening, I hope.”
She asks, “Have you talked with Wendell about this? What
does he say?”
I was sitting in my friend’s kitchen
Drinking coffee
(“Coffee, always coffee,” he says many years later, the last
time I saw him alive…)
As sage and cedar “tobacco” smolders in a shell on the table
He talks softly about “throwing down tobacco,”
He talks about “ quieting your mind”
He talks about behaving in a respectful manner
When approaching these stones,
These “Stone Prayers,” as I’ve come to call them…
Years and years later, a
friend writes, “Stone prayers have become a business. I wish there was as
much focus on being pure, respectful, and staying on the good path. I'm personally not sure what the value of
saving sacred places is if they've been desanctified…”
