The Stone Sutra

Everything thrums with life.

Your body. This stone.

These trembling oaks waltzing

With the curvy, overdressed cumulus

Across the perfect dome of the living sky.

This coneflower. That weed.

The unnumbered ranks of crickets—

The string section of these dusky hollows.

Is that stone alive? Ask it.

Put your ear to it, between 

The moss and lichen.

It speaks of deep time.

Listen as it tells you about 

Its birth as a star, a supernova,

Its millennia as a seabed,

The great sweeping, freezing, burning 

Upheaval into the mountain

And then the slow, so slow,

Settling, breaking off, softening, and rounding

That brought it here

To your feet.

Everything thrums with life. 

These straight-spined poplars,

Plumb as God’s fenceposts,

Breathing in your breath,

Breathing in the air you breathe,

Breathing in your breath.

And you, lithe as a river spirit,

You, unnamed earth deity,

Standing as you are, your

Sumptuous self, 

Holding soil black as coffee

In one hand

Clear water in the other.

Amber honey, warm in the sun,

Pouring down your body.

You are ripe with living,

With blood, with desire, 

With calm and bellowing,

Breaking and mending.

Oh, Christ, oh gods,

Oh arhats and bodhisattvas,

Bears, foxes, beetles, and centipedes,

How I love living. 

This is the gospel.

This is the dharma.

This is the poem we whisper in the night.

Everything thrums with life.

Deep in caves, white blind fish

Process between rock walls like

Silent monks off to attend

An evensong that has never 

Been heard. Only felt

Since there were first two atoms

To rub together, long before

Our core’s spark was lit,

Or the moon hung in the sky.

The fish know it, deep in their 

Somnolent, black cloisters

Down with little else but

Crystals and coal and gold,

Bacteria and slime who feed

On poison gas and darkness.

Place your ear on this stone.

Everything thrums with life.

—Clay Steakley

(dedicated to my August ’22 Southern Dharma friends)