How I Carry You

At grief support, they gave me
a piece of petrified stone,
polished, to comfort me;
I wrote “adventure” on it, for that is how
I want to remember you –
or so I said.

But that stone speaks so much more to me;
when we would creek-walk
you would pick up stones, wet so they looked polished,
all their colors revealed,
mused as to their stories and how it ended up there.
wood, rock. water.
A palm size fragment
shaped by nature.

This stone tells your story
though it never cradled in your hand;
it started as wood, malleable,
the sapling grew, a child of the earth
lived in forests – as you did when you ran
breathing scents of douglas fir.
It was a companion of deer, of elk, of bear.
And when pressure came to bear down on it,
it became more stable, more solid
changing its substance but not its body
Its grain is still there
but it will not give way.
Then polished, all it’s color, its grain revealed
 as if just picked up from the water.
Wood. Stone. Water:
transient into something almost eternal
that would endure.
I imagine that it is a fragment of you
nestled in my palm;
That is how I remember you.