Meditation on the Word Stone
Jim Brown

Rinsed to icy essence, the stones

Have forgotten how wheat

Yellows yearly near Saskatoon. 

Loaded for storm, the sky looms

Blood-blue and treeless,

Curving away west. 

There’s an ocean beyond the day,

But it has not written you

Into its ceaseless poem. 

It never shuts up, the sea,

Tilting its white hats

To the faceless March beach. 

Beaten, the nine year old boy

Lets the iron and salt of his

Blood glut his throat to tears, 

But his story isn’t new,

Won’t hold, and stones,