1996 (And Years and Years Later)

 

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…”