Stone on Stone

So little is a stone,* yes; but not so little 
a life. One day you're learning to walk 
on the grass which cushions every fall; 
the next, you sit in your kitchen which is 
suddenly empty, except, perhaps, for the cats 
who stay loyal to your solitude as they are
to theirs. Every day I am growing more 
and more alone as well, though the world 
has gradually become noisier, as though
emerging from the time of sickness
and death is easy as shedding a coat.
Every day we want to do a calculus
of what has passed, what is lost.  
We want to reconstruct this, as if 
the wave that flung itself on the shore 
of what we knew has not dispersed
into salt, or grit, or sand. Better 
perhaps to remember— once,
we struck one stone against
another in the middle of a night
filled with such cold and dark.


~ *Naomi Shihab Nye, from "Burning the Old Year"